Alarming trend in spyware could undermine IT industry

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Washington: Spyware’s explosive growth has become a “very alarming trend” that could scare away computer users and undermine the industry, Michael George, general manager of Dell Inc.’s US consumer business, said last Friday.

Spyware, code that allows outsiders to monitor computer activity, now affects about 90 percent of computers, he said.

“It’s not just an annoyance,” George said. “Increasingly, it’s becoming more and more pernicious. It can degrade a system’s performance to the point of being unusable, it can block access to the Internet, it can prevent you from accessing e-mail (and) it can redirect your browser to some other home page.”

With spyware spreading so rapidly, nearly four users in ten say they feel less secure operating their computers today than a year ago, according to a nationwide poll that Dell and the nonprofit Internet Education Foundation (IEF) released Friday.

The poll of 724 Internet users, taken Sept. 17 to 19, showed that only 24 percent of respondents regard themselves as “knowledgeable” about how to handle spyware threats.

George and officials from IEF and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held a press conference to urge consumers to take more steps to protect themselves.

Many Americans have started doing just that. George, said that since January, more customers have called for help with spyware than for any other technical support issue. Spyware-related phone calls now make up as much as 20 percent of all help calls, compared with just 1 percent to 2 percent in August, 2003, he said.

“I’ve never seen that type of explosion,” he said.

In July, Dell began offering tech-support services for customers willing to pay $39 per incident for diagnostic help in fighting spyware. George declined to say how many people have paid the fee, but said “demand has outstripped capacity.”

Addressing spyware attacks is both expensive and time consuming because each caller could have as many as 200 spyware programs downloaded onto his computer, he said.

Dell, the world’s largest computer maker, usually does not become deeply involved in software issues. But in recent months, it has accelerated efforts to root out software viruses, worms and spyware because they are turning off potential computers users.

Spyware programs can surreptitiously invade computers to collect personal information or display unwanted ads — and it can slow system performance. The software enters computers via e-mail, “drive-by” downloads or by being hidden inside other software that the consumer himself installs or downloads.