Truce called in Spyware wars

Truce called in Spyware wars

WinWhatWhere no longer breaks anti-spyware product

By Bob Sullivan MSNBC


Martch 27 — In the latest chapter of Spyware vs. Anti-spyware, the maker of snooping program WinWhatWhere backed away from evasive programming tactics Wednesday. Richard Eaton, president of WinWhatWhere Corp., said his software would no longer insert stray code into Anti-spyware program Who’s Watching Me to break the program. The announcement comes after MSNBC.com revealed WinWhatWhere and competitor SpectorSoft Corp. both intentionally break the anti-Spyware program.

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SO-CALLED SPYWARE programs have been controversial for years. Programs like Spector and WinWhatWhere can be secretly installed on any machine — even from afar — and quietly watch every keystroke and mouse motion. Information gleaned by the spy software can then be remotely e-mailed to the real spy.
As a counter-measure, some programmers have developed “anti-spy” programs like Trapware.com’s Who’s Watching Me. But developer Wes Austin revealed to MSNBC.com on Monday that spyware developers had recently started writing code to break his software, so Who’s Watching Me didn’t blow their cover.
WinWhatWhere did so by inserting stray text into a file critical for Who’s Watching Me’s operations; Spector simply crashes the anti-spy program.
But Wednesday, Eaton said he had a change of heart.

Who's Watching WinWhatWhere?

“I got to thinking writing to their file wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” Eaton said. “The thought of writing into another program’s files, well, I guess that’s not playing fair. You don’t want anyone to think your program is doing something malicious.”
So as of Wednesday, WinWhatWhere no longer inserts the stray text into Who’s Watching Me files.
Asked if he would try to circumvent Who’s Watching Me another way, Eaton said only: “I can’t say.”
SpectorSoft has not announced any changes to its program.