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Frontside July 2004 • Vol.4 Issue 7 Page(s) 14 in print issue |
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Spyware 3.0 The Saint by Alex St. John |
Windows was not designed with software uninstallation in mind. Microsoft never expected users to really remove Office from their machines once it was installed. Uninstallation is an afterthought, and as such, is very difficult to do correctly and thoroughly in Windows. This is especially the case for software plug-ins that run in the browser. All software that does not fully and cleanly remove itself when asked to uninstall is not necessarily sloppy or malign; there are many good reasons for software to leave bits behind. The number of Registry entries and files that a software product has is not a measure of how bloated, sloppy or resource-consuming it is. The Windows Registry was designed as a place for software to store persistent state information independently of the file system or file system path names. This was done, in part, to make it easier for consumers to drag and drop files around on their Desktop without breaking important data associations contained within those files. An application with a lot of Registry entries may just be doing a great job of using the Registry exactly as intended. Well-designed applications commonly share components with other applications to minimize bloat. This sharing is a problem when it comes to uninstallation because nothing in Windows forces all applications that depend on shared components to record this sharing correctly with the Registry. As such it is dangerous for an application asked to uninstall itself to delete shared components, even when the Registry says deletion should be safe; the Registry can't be trusted. If a Windows app can't really know how to uninstall itself cleanly, how can a third-party removeware product with no understanding of how that application was designed to work be more effective at removing it from your computer? It can't be. In our case the leading removeware vendors were "uninstalling" our software by unilaterally deleting all directories on the user's system named WILDTANGENT. If you had a folder by that name containing personal documents or important files, your removeware would have deleted them. There are two broad classes of online software that are completely legitimate that bear many of the hallmarks typically associated with spyware. The first is DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology used to sell and secure electronic assets, such as music, video, and games. In order to sell a user a digital asset, most DRM technologies must gather information about the user and their machine and bind that data securely to the purchased asset which inherently associates that data with personally identifiable information. That software may also have to bind that asset to a particular machine and encode data on that machine that is difficult to remove to prevent tampering or hacking to steal the asset. The second broad class of software includes updaters (or download managers) that are designed to enable complex software products to be easily supported on a large scale through automated error reporting and patching systems. Windows Update is the most obvious example of this kind of application. Updaters and download managers will increasingly and necessarily become components of all software we buy. They can be used for both good and evil, but it is a serious mistake to label them all "spyware" and for removeware products to tamper with them. An important change has occurred in the software world. The Internet has made software a "broadcast media." Applications are no longer static media like movies that once created, never change; they have become sitcoms that evolve constantly, are often sponsored by advertisers, and are broadcast into your home like television instead of having to be sought out. It's progress and a natural feature of the Internet. Think about it.  Getting riled up? Email TheSaint@cpumag.com. |
