February 14th, 2006
Anti-Spyware Coalition workshop and other news
Where did the time go? My apologies for the lack of blogging. I’ve been traveling and without internet access part of the time. I was all set to blog last night and the internet connection went down at the hotel where I’m staying. At any rate, hopefully I’ll be back on schedule with blogging now. Last week I was at the Anti-Spyware Coalition workshop in Washington DC and managed to get away before the snow storm hit. Now I’m in Florida and it’s cold! The ASC workshop went well — kudos to Ari Schwartz and crew for the great job in organizing and putting it on. Several other bloggers have covered it well and instead of recapping all the events I’ll link to their blogs. Brian Krebs of he Washington Post blogged his take on the events. I had the pleasure of meeting Brian and can tell you he’s one cool dude. Richard Stiennon of Webroot was blogging live at the event and you can read his posts here and here. Stiennon mentioned an anticipated announcement of another major prosecution, but it didn’t happen. I was impressed with the welcome address from Deborah Platt Majoras, Chairman, Federal Trade Commission and her conviction for addressing the problem of spyware. The FTC is planning another series of hearings on spyware this fall.
BillP of WinPatrol posted some photos from the workshop and wrote about Cindy Southworth’s excellent presentation on the use of spyware against victims of domestic violence. Cindy is from the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV). BillP also posted a pic of Ben Edelman and Dave Methvin going over their presentations which were excellent and really should have been seen early in the workshop insead of at the end.
Dave presented some very scary examples of web sites easily found by kids doing simple searches. Ben followed up with examples of how reputable companies end up feeding the adware middle men which in feed the folks installing the spyware. There’s a good reason both Dave and Ben keep getting invited to speak at these events.
There were a couple of dramatic moments. Walter Mossberg and a representative of DoubleClick had a heated discussion about third party tracking cookies and Sean Sundwall insisted that 180solutions is just like WhenU in its distribution methods, a statement that Eric Howes took issue with and I’m sure Bill Day of WhenU did NOT agree with either.
Chris Boyd, aka Paperghost, has a nice summary of the events here. I met many good folks and will take this opportunity to say thanks to all for the kind words about my blog and website.
