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Wherever the term "adware" is used, it is referring to a category of software, not to any particular company or product.

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Update: September 21

Everyone, thank you very much for helping me out with this. All servers seem to be working at the moment and the site is now using them again. I don't need this tested now, so I have removed the links.

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I would like to ask a favor of everyone. The ISP that hosts my proxy servers say they have made a change and that the recent connection problems should be fixed now. I would like every one of you to take a few seconds and test this please. I don't want to switch back to those servers if they are still not working for everyone. Once you have clicked the links, please let me know whether or not you could access the site through them.

[removed]

Please write and let me know if you could access these servers. If some work and some don't, please let me know which ones. If all of them work, please put "All worked" as the subject line. If none of them work, please put "None worked" as the subject. Use this address ( [removed]) for this so the response doesn't crowd out the rest of my inbox (which is crowded enough as it is).

Thank you very much for helping me out with this.

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Program: Evidence Terminator
Price: $49.95 [20% off until September 1, 2004]
Spycop + ET Bundle: $54.95 [$44.95 off the regular price]
Purchase Evidence Terminator [Use coupon code SPY-XKVV-INFO]
Purchase Spycop + ET Bundle [Discount is applied automatically]

Everything you do on your computer leaves behind a trail. When you surf to a web site, you leave behind internet cache, address bar history, web site visit history and cookies. When you open a document, Windows saves the filename into the registry. When you run certain programs, Windows saves a file into a temporary folder and often doesn't delete it afterward.

Evidence Terminator optionally cleans all of the following:

Recycle bins on every drive in your system. Internet history logs stored on your hard drive. Internet cookies. Temporary Internet Files (caches and other media files). Temporary program files. Recent documents list. Backup files. LOG files. CD burner software temp files. Program temp files not in the system temp folder. Those evil index.dat files no matter how many of them you have. Overwrites files to help prevent recovery. The drop down URL list from IE. The run list, find computers list, and recently searched file list.

Evidence Terminator is made by the authors of Spycop anti-spyware software. Spycop is an excellent program for detecting and removing surveillance spyware such as Spectorsoft, iSpynow, WinWhatWhere and others. It is considered by some to have the largest database of surveillance spyware on the market.

If you have any problems with the ordering page or with the coupon, please email Catherine http://www1.spywareinfo.com/email2.php.

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There is talk of advertisers buying "billboard" space and product placement in video games. This actually sounds like a pretty good idea. Modern video games (for the PC anyway, I wouldn't know about console games) are so realistic that they already include billboards in virtual cities. Why not advertise on them with real products? It might even bring down the price of the game.

Unfortunately, the ideas being discussed are not limited to advertising. They actually want to track when each ad is viewed, meaning that tracking software will log each ad impression and send it to some advertising server. I think this crosses the line into bad behavior and is completely unnecessary. Real billboards can't report how many people view them so why would advertisers even consider putting tracking software into video games for virtual billboards?

If this plan goes through and video games start coming out with tracking software embedded, I believe it will backfire and hurt the game developers. While this wouldn't necessarily be spyware, inevitably it will be denounced as such on message boards around the internet. No doubt certain clueless news sites will pin the label of "spyware" on these games and there goes their sales. People are aware of advertising spyware now and are far more likely to pass on a video game designed to track their activities, especially if stories start going around calling these games spyware.

Considering that the game could be firewalled from the internet, it would produce faulty data anyway. No doubt most people simply will deny the game access to the internet, when their firewall alerts them a connection attempt. With Microsoft's XP Service Pack 2 enabling the Windows Firewall by default, it is doubtful that any such tracking software would work at all.

Let's hope someone with some sense puts this idea of tracking advertising impressions from games into the bin where it belongs.

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The US Department of Justice is expected on Thursday to announce the arrests of dozens of people for violating federal laws against spamming, phishing and other online scams.

While I applaud the government for arresting spammers, they could do far more to stop the problem by repealing the CAN-SPAM Act. CAN-SPAM makes spamming a legal activity and has made the United States the laughing stock of the world as more and more spam begins to originate from within the US. The problem has escalated to such a degree that 65% of all emails circulating around the internet now are spam.

This is yet another example of a bad law making worse the problem it was intended to address.

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I do not intentionally link to web sites that require registration before allowing visitors to read the article. At the time I read these articles, I was not required to register. If one of these sites requires that you register before allowing you to read the article, please let me know and I will blacklist that site.

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2004/08/23/story3.html :: Valley wins point on spyware

http://www.kotv.com/main/home/stories.asp?whichpage=1&id=67737 :: Keeping ' Spyware' Off Your Computer

http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=distribution&id=1518 :: SpyWare That Actually Spies On You

http://www.wcpo.com/wcpo/localshows/dontwasteyourmoney/9a500f9.html :: Spyware Blockers

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,116990,00.asp :: A Two-Pronged Spyware Defense

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1637637,00.asp :: Privacy Advocates Ask Retailers to Guard Personal Data

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/5651/1/228 :: Patriot Act nixes privacy

http://www.indystar.com/articles/0/172244-9380-223.html :: E-mail tracking raises privacy issues

http://www.coloradoan.com/news/stories/20040822/business/1096747.html :: Most balk at cell 411

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/22/ING8689JT61.DTL :: Proposition 69 could threaten privacy of DNA