These days, it’s hard to go anywhere on campus without facing
a bombardment of solicitors passing out concert invitations or political groups recruiting voters. However, the soliciting often gets worse
for students once they start surfing the Internet. Web users are exposed to pop-up advertisements, malicious viruses and system-slowing spyware that not only annoys
people, but also reveals much of their identity.
“Currently, spyware mostly
reports browsing habits or other personal information back to a central server for targeted advertising or other purposes,” said Dan Albrick, microcomputer services manager at the University’s Micro Services. “As bad as this is, it could be a whole lot worse. What if your computer was infected with a spyware keystroke grabber (a tool that logs which keys a user hits), which was able to snatch your online banking information?”
At the Micro Services department in McKenzie Hall, new University students are coming in droves to have accounts set up, connections configured or to cure computers infected through University networks.
“I can say that almost every Windows computer that comes in to the helpdesk here in McKenzie hall is infected in multiple ways,” Albrick said. “It’s typical for us to see machines with traditional viruses, spyware and worms. In many cases, the user’s computer is infected with more than 100 distinct threats.”
Spencer Smith, microcomputer support specialist for the Computing Center Web site, said the largest number of individual spyware components found on one machine brought to microcomputer services was 2,100.
In response, the University gives new students a DuckWare CD, which includes an Internet browser, spyware, anti-virus and pop-up ad blocking software to eliminate most of these dangers.
Albrick also advised students using Windows to regularly update their systems with the latest service pack from Microsoft to fix dangers, many of which come from its Internet Explorer browser. Lately, attacks have been caused by holes in the operating system or IE browser, which make users vulnerable to attacks.
“Most times people are using Web mail, and they click on an attached file, which then infects the computer,” said Sam Crow, a technician at the EMU Computer Lab. “I’d say to people to be diligent with e-mail and who it is sending the mail to you.”
Mac users are safer from most viruses and security holes than Windows users because of Mac operating system security and also because there are far less Mac users.
Though the U.S. Senate has recently banned spyware and spam e-mail with its SPYBLOCK program, both Internet practices are slow and hard to completely remove. The Senate Commerce Committee responsible for the legislation will focus on eliminating secret software that piggybacks on other applications, such as file-sharing programs, and is installed by users who agree to the installation notice without reading what such programs will install, according to a Commerce Committee press release.

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