Vendors Agree On Definition Of Spyware Without Disintegrating

Overhype

from the yes,-but-does-it-help-at-all? dept

While the last “industry coalition” of anti-spyware vendors fell apart when they opened their doors to certain adware vendors, the latest coalition promised they would be much more effective — by setting pretty limited goals. To start with, they said they needed to define spyware — and now they claim they’ve succeeded. They’ve come out with what they hope is a decent set of guidelines that distinguishes the worst kinds of malware from the not-so-bad kind. It’s not clear, from the description, how useful these guidelines really are. It took them five months to basically say surreptitious installs are really bad and tracking cookies aren’t quite so bad. That was pretty clear before — so it’ll be interesting to see what the various anti-spyware firms actually do with these guidelines, and if it makes any kind of a difference.