grazzhoppa
06-06-05, 03:39 AM
On the MozillaZine forums, under this topic (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=275697) about Lavasoft/AdAware and how a spyware company pressured them to remove their spyware from AdAware's definition files, this guy says,
You'll love this. The US Government formed a task force to investigate computer privacy issues at the behest of the president. The goal was for the task force to make recommendations to the White House to enhance computer privacy for American citizens. The President;s first appointent to the task force was a Senior Vice President from Claria Corporation. A look at Claria's product line it is plain the president put the fox in the hen house.
So I'm curious and go googling.
Homeland Security's website that has the news about the committee and its members. Scroll down a bit - http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=4367
The committee member in question:
D. Reed Freeman, Chief Privacy Officer and Vice President, Claria Corporation, Arlington, VA
Claria corporation's website showing their products and services - http://www.claria.com/products/
They are basically the company who brought GAIN/Gator spyware to the original Kazaa program.
From their corporate overview/history page:
Claria was founded in 1998 as The Gator Corporation to deliver the promise of one-to-one marketing on the Internet. The guiding vision was to develop a massive consumer audience by offering valuable web/software content for free in exchange for the right to show highly targeted advertising based on consumers' anonymous surfing behavior.
I don't think this will effect the committee's reports because it is just one person out of 20 qualified-looking people. For all we know, they have a spyware company being represented in there for the purpose of learning how those companies legally put their software on people's computers.
Companies like Claria call it marketing research (which their products/services definately are), but a lot of people call it an invasion of privacy and hence spyware. The term "spyware" is a bit grandiose. If the "bahavioral data" that spyware "anonymously" sends back is exactly, simply just that - and it's stated in the EULA of the software - how harmful is it to the causal computer user?
In all fairness, spyware companies should be represented. Do you think what these companies do should be legal, and should they get a fair chance of explaining themselves?
on a side note, you can actually go to a public meeting of this committee. The next one is being held at Harvard University. You got to call a number and reserve a spot. See here for more info: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial_0622.xml
You'll love this. The US Government formed a task force to investigate computer privacy issues at the behest of the president. The goal was for the task force to make recommendations to the White House to enhance computer privacy for American citizens. The President;s first appointent to the task force was a Senior Vice President from Claria Corporation. A look at Claria's product line it is plain the president put the fox in the hen house.
So I'm curious and go googling.
Homeland Security's website that has the news about the committee and its members. Scroll down a bit - http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=4367
The committee member in question:
D. Reed Freeman, Chief Privacy Officer and Vice President, Claria Corporation, Arlington, VA
Claria corporation's website showing their products and services - http://www.claria.com/products/
They are basically the company who brought GAIN/Gator spyware to the original Kazaa program.
From their corporate overview/history page:
Claria was founded in 1998 as The Gator Corporation to deliver the promise of one-to-one marketing on the Internet. The guiding vision was to develop a massive consumer audience by offering valuable web/software content for free in exchange for the right to show highly targeted advertising based on consumers' anonymous surfing behavior.
I don't think this will effect the committee's reports because it is just one person out of 20 qualified-looking people. For all we know, they have a spyware company being represented in there for the purpose of learning how those companies legally put their software on people's computers.
Companies like Claria call it marketing research (which their products/services definately are), but a lot of people call it an invasion of privacy and hence spyware. The term "spyware" is a bit grandiose. If the "bahavioral data" that spyware "anonymously" sends back is exactly, simply just that - and it's stated in the EULA of the software - how harmful is it to the causal computer user?
In all fairness, spyware companies should be represented. Do you think what these companies do should be legal, and should they get a fair chance of explaining themselves?
on a side note, you can actually go to a public meeting of this committee. The next one is being held at Harvard University. You got to call a number and reserve a spot. See here for more info: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial_0622.xml