• by April 20, 2004

The war in Iraq isn't the only thing politicians are talking about in Washington.

Yesterday, lawmakers, adware providers, attorneys, and industry insiders gathered to discuss consumer complaints regarding spam, spyware, and adware during a forum held by the Federal Trade Commission. Our reporter, Ross Fadner, attended the day's events and concludes that legislators and their representatives appear to be more interested in pacifying angry consumers than in taking the time to fully examine the effects of proposed legislation on companies that use online marketing.

For example, Fadner notes the comments of Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel for Google. McLaughlin told the group assembled that proposed legislation in the U.S. Senate, which for the most part, takes a thorough approach, includes a clause that would require a notice and consent form each time information is taken from a consumer's computer. McLaughlin indicated just how impossibly cumbersome a task this would be, given the rate at which data and information is cookied, extracted, assessed, and so forth.

The differences between adware and spyware also came up at the gathering. Adware providers such as Claria and WhenU offer end-user license agreements that require a full disclosure of their practices, such as what is being bundled with the software, how ads are going to be served, a rough estimate of the frequency of those ads, uninstall procedures, and so forth.

By contrast, spyware and its variants known as slimeware and malware, among other similarly appetizing names, lives in the computer and often times, a consumer doesn't know it's there. It is next to impossible to uninstall; its providers offer no license agreements. Spyware is anything that does not offer a full disclosure and alters the computer's settings and browser in some way.

Google's McLaughlin said the company's pages have been hit by slimeware companies CoolWebSearch and SearchAssistant which are applications downloaded by users often inadvertently or completely without their knowledge. The software sabotage's consumers' Google pages.

It appears that the discussion raised far more questions than answers. Spyware is going to be around for a while and legitimate adware providers are going to fight like hell to separate themselves from it. The industry must come out with best practices, and soon, or legislators will do it for them.