Monday, January 30, 2006

Google's New Badware Site Is Lame

New York Newsday Article: "Though it was overshadowed last week by news that Google is going to censor its Chinese search engine and protect the privacy of pedophiles in the United States, another bit of Googlish news caught my eye: The company is funding a big, new academic effort at Harvard and Cambridge to combat spyware and adware, which the new organization has decided to call 'badware.' Read about it at the new Web site, stopbadware.org.

According to the site, 'StopBadware.org is a 'Neighborhood Watch' campaign aimed at fighting badware.' It says the organization 'will seek to provide reliable, objective information about downloadable applications in order to help consumers make better choices about what they download onto their computers. We aim to become a central clearinghouse for research on badware and the bad actors who spread it, and become a focal point for developing collaborative, community-minded approaches to stopping badware.'"