Spyware laws go to Parliament
Spyware laws go to Parliament
The Australian Democrats are in the process of drafting the first anti spyware Bill in Australia, that will alert user's to the possibility of information being gathered, analysed and sold for profit from their PC.
The "Spyware Control Bill" will identify "spyware" when personal information is harvested via a Web site or with software applications for marketing reasons without consent.
The Democrats are not looking to ban anything under the legislation, but they are seeking to promote more openness and honesty.
Recent research carried out in the U.K. found that on average every PC has 28 so-called spyware programs installed on them.
In addition, 41m instances of adware, tracking cookies, spyware, trojans and other malicious programs were found in 1.5m PCs conducted in this survey.
Network Associates recently released the McAfee VirusScan 8.0 to try to combat this problem. Bill Kerrigan, senior vice president, of the McAfee Security Consumer division at Network Associates said. "Recent consumer PC threats are at an all-time high, making the need for an all-inclusive anti-virus solution immediate and essential. With McAfee VirusScan 8.0, home and small business users can trust their personal information and PCs are protected from viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, web dialers, and other malicious threats around the clock."
This bill is aimed at having even more affect on preventing spyware from damaging PCs. Democrats want the user to be get answers to questions such as: Are you gathering information, what is this information, will it be sold to anyone else, how will you protect my privacy and who sell it to. This is so consent can be granted.
The draft bill focuses on three main types of spyware including key stroke loggers and screen capture utilities used to capture passwords, adware for targeted advertising and pop-ups.
Viruses, trojans, worms and programs that install diallers leading to very large phone bills are also on the list too. The Democrats are aiming for many hundreds of thousands of fines and jail terms too for any infringements.
Related Article: