Anti-Spyware Bill Advances in Congress

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Anti-Spyware Bill Advances in Congress
Thu Jun 24,11:59 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee on Thursday approved a bill designed to crack down on deceptive "spyware" that hides in users' computers and secretly monitors their activities.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 45-4 for a bill that would require software makers to notify people before loading new programs on their machines that collects information about them.

Spyware can sap computing power, crash machines and bury users under a blizzard of unwanted ads. It can capture passwords, credit-card numbers and other sensitive data.

The bill, introduced by Reps. Mary Bono, a California Republican, and Ed Towns, a New York Democrat, would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek millions of dollars in fines for some of the practices lawmakers consider most egregious, such as logging users' keystrokes or stealing their identities.

It also would require that spyware be made easily removable.

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I think that this is good. Very good. It's nice to see that the government (even if it's not my own) is taking some action against this.

I'm glad that somebodys finally doing something about this shit. It's just pathetic some of the things they send. Talking about spam in particular here. My old email account used to get some pretty horrific stuff. For example, last year during the war, I was getting spam for sites advertising pictures of Iraqui civillians being raped by the soldiers. Now I mean, that's bad enough, but consider this: they're sending this out randomly, they don't care who to. Putting a little message at the bottom of the ad(especially if the ad is full of graphic pictures)saying only click if you're 18 or older is NOT going to stop a seven year old being subjected to seeing this filth. It's absolutly disgraceful. I'm not one to complain about how porn degrades women and what not, but I do object to people advertising their beastiality/scatophillia/rape sites in a way that leaves them easily accessible to children.