Okay, here’s the kind of item that we stay up nights looking for. According to a study by the University of Washington (UW), potentially dangerous spyware on the Web is actually declining, perhaps significantly. While most spyware is simply a huge nuisance, created by nerds who haven’t been on a date in a really long time, some of it is quite malicious. Who in their right mind wouldn’t worry at least a little about identity theft? The study concluded that more than 5% of executable files contained piggybacked spyware, and that one in 62 Internet domains are set up to perform “drive-by download attacks” on users who simply visit the site. Game-related and “celebrity watch” sites seem to pose the biggest threat for spyware, while sites that offer pirated software top the list of “drive-by” attacks.
The UW study did have some good news. Automated Web crawlers noted a 93 percent reduction in drive-by download attacks. It may be as a result of new anti-spyware tools or possibly because spyware distributors have been caught and actually prosecuted. In a related item, Denver-based First Data Corp. just completed a survey that showed a whopping 43 percent of adults have received a “phishing” contact. Such e-mail schemes are aimed at acquiring credit card or bank information. They’re usually easy to spot (we genuinely enjoy the ones with obvious typos), but more and more actually appear to be from a user’s bank or credit card company through the use of corporate logos. Five percent of those “phished” actually gave up personal information, which can be a costly mistake.