Hasta la vista



The Governator, 'ole Arnie himself has supported new legislation in California which came into force yesterday which will penalise those who inflict spyware onto user's computers. Spyware and adware is at best a flaming nuisance leading to more spam and unwanted pop-up ads but can also lead to credit card fraud, identity theft etc. Many systems, even those with the likes of the excellent Spybot, harbour unwanted 'guests' in their systems with users unaware. As more 'normal' folk (i.e. not just we IT literate geeks) increasingly come onto the online community this is a growing problem for users and also for legitimate online business since it dents consumer confidence. It's a virtual equivelant of lice and syphilis and requires computer users to practise safe data transfer (use a rubber during sex and a good firewall/spybot detector when online, the virtual equivelant of a propholactic for your interface - oh, and an ointment if you still have that embarrising rash).



Hopefully more legislation will follow round the world on this growing and irritating problem. I did find it ironic though that Schwarzennegger is supporting this legislation given his famous roles in the Terminator movies, where the enemy was an invasive machine intelligence which comes of age when it infects the web in Terminator 3. So perhaps it is a case of 'fighting Spyware today so we don't need to fight Skynet tomorrow'? But maybe Spyware writers will send their software back in time before the legislation...