Christine de la Huerta was being watched.
She didn't know it at the time. But the Coral Gables, Fla., executive's computer was rife with applications that were tracking her Web travels. Everything from sites visited to downloads to e-mail and chat activity were being logged.
The info gathered could have been simple statistical data on her travels. But still, the fact that she was being watched was unsettling, she said.
"I was so naive. It never occurred to me that companies would be tracking what I see on the net, things I buy and keystrokes I entered," admitted de la Huerta, a vice president at RBB Public Relations. "What an invasion of privacy."
De la Huerta was not alone - neither in her surprise, nor her having been invaded. She was being watched by "spyware." This tracking software, also called "adware," is advertising-supported software often installed surreptitiously on a person's PC when they visit a Web site, download an application, or click on a banner ad or offer. The application installs cookies, or unique user information gathering devices, to the PC. They can also post tool bars and pop-up ads on a user's browser, or change the homepage destination.
The software taps the user's Internet connection to mine data, continuously feeding statistical information back to the host company about the user's Web travels, chat logs or many other correspondence or Internet activities. Adware and spyware are not illegal applications, and most companies claim to adhere to privacy policies saying they won't gather sensitive or specific user data. Still, user information is being gathered without the user's knowledge - or ability to control what is being transmitted.
"These tools are perfectly legal in most places," notes SpyChecker.com, a Web site that provides information and links about adware and spy software. "But, just like an ordinary tape recorder, if they are abused, they can seriously violate your privacy."
Though not intrusive at first sight, these applications can be "nefarious and bothersome," said Victor Kopcewich, a remote systems administrator with Courtesy Computers Inc., a full-service computer provider and maintenance company in Davie, Fla. Not only do some applications cause pop-ups and changes in user settings, they consume the computer's memory space and system resources, slowing the PC and user productivity, he said.
"Some spyware put changes in the registry, so it's always there, hard to find and difficult to remove," Kopcewich said. "You can easily pick this up by just browsing, clicking on a window that says, You must click here to continue. That allows the application access to install itself on your machine. They don't tell you this, of course."
Kopcewich recommends avoiding clicking "Yes" to those applications or banner ads. Also, he suggests downloading inexpensive or shareware applications like Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and Enigma Software's Spybot: Search and Destroy to ferret out and delete such applications already installed to the computer. While the first search might take more than an hour, running the applications every few weeks will quickly catch adware or spyware installed to the machine, he said.
De la Huerta learned how infected her machine was by downloading Spybot. Now, she runs Spybot every few weeks to clean out the software and speed up her machine.
"I could not believe the number of programs running on my PC - programs I did not install, did not approve, and were slowing down my computer," she said. "My guess is a lot of other business people out there don't know about this."
