Blog: Dan E. Linstedt

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Microsoft wants Spyware??

General business sense says WARNING! WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! (sorry, line from an old US TV show). Apparently Microsoft is vying to buy a well-known spam-ware company. Check out the news article here.

Is this move brilliant or stupid? We'll leave that one to the analysts - as it is just a rumor for now anyhow, but I know what I would do..

So you're using a MS centric PC? No room for Mac's in your company? What happens when a trusted enterprise server software company like Microsoft is possibly going to buy out a well-known spyware/malware company?

Why would they want it? From a BI perspective, what does it give them? Well, deep data mining capabilities and characteristics for one - apparently this spyware company has a huge set of spyware collected information. I've put together a list of what I think Microsoft could use this technology for:

Positive things:
* Increasing customer share
* Increasing knowledge on what and how to market to customers
* Increasing security of their fire-walls, and make a serious statement to putting a stop to spyware and malware.
* Finally finding and fixing some of their most blatant operating system errors (in terms of security).

Now some of the negative things:
* Embedding spyware/malware directly into every OS on the planet and releasing it as invisible hooks (some of which they already have) to reach your machine when you're not looking.
* Popups for their own advertising campaigns.
* Controlling the advertising banners that appear on your Windows PC - replacing every 3rd banner with a Microsoft banner.

All this aside, it's a very interesting position that MS has put themselves in, and according to the story - they have declined comment on the rumor stating that it's just that, a rumor.

From a BI perspective, and understanding their customer base - it makes some limited business sense - but from a security perspective it only makes sense if they use it to beef up the defenses of the OS, rather than providing more back-doors into the system.

From a personal perspective I have to ask myself these questions:
* Did I ever authorize any of this personal information about me to be captured by some spyware company?
* How much information on me do they truly have?
* What gives them the right to "sell" my personal information for profit? Shouldn't microsoft be paying me money for my information? Or at least asking me if I allow this information to become a part of their operations, especially since it was most likely obtained without my knowledge?

I also have to ask the industry this: at what point does "selling and using" personal information (without my consent) actually become "identity theft by corporate business?"

One more question comes to mind, or at least a parallel observation: In the credit industry we have laws that allow us (although challenging and difficult) to monitor and change (to some degree) our credit reports. In this industry, they collect the "equivalent" of a credit report - our surfing habits, and other personal information, yet there are NO laws that protect our rights to monitor, change or even file in court against those who use that information illegally or for profit without our consent.

Injustice I say, injustice. If Microsoft buys this company and uses the spyware for anything other than improving their security, then there may very well be a Macintosh in my future...

Comments? How do you feel about this?

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