Sunday's New York Times (registration required) had a very interesting article about spyware-infected PCs being thrown out instead of being repaired. The introduction to the article provides much fodder for comment
On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.My initial reaction was sheer amazement that the holder of a Ph.D. in computer science would not invest any effort in trying to salvage or repair the machine. Admittedly the spyware wars are getting much nastier, where the active countermeasures against removal have been accepted and implemented by the more "mainstream" malware providers (e.g. Direct Revenue's Aurora, a nasty piece of work that is the constant topic of discussion on spyware removal forums), however, isn't it odd that someone who should be providing thought leadership toward academic and commercial computing wouldn't wish to even take the simple expedient of formatting his hard drive and reinstalling his operating system? Surely as an Internet executive he has access to some resource in his company capable of performing that relatively simple task, or his academic connections could certainly find him an intern or student willing to wipe and restore the machine. The idea of throwing a perfectly good computer out merely because of a spyware infestation is so astonishingly wasteful (perhaps some student or deserving organization could use it?) that it boggles the mind.Mr. Tucker, an Internet industry executive who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, decided that rather than take the time to remove the offending software, he would spend $400 on a new machine.
He is not alone in his surrender in the face of growing legions of digital pests, not only adware and spyware but computer viruses and other Internet-borne infections as well. Many PC owners are simply replacing embattled machines rather than fixing them.
"I was spending time every week trying to keep the machine free of viruses and worms," said Mr. Tucker, a vice president of Salesforce.com, a Web services firm based here. "I was losing the battle. It was cheaper and faster to go to the store and buy a low-end PC."
Article comments
1 - Matt Paprocki
Why not just replace the hard drive???
2 - The Proprietor
A low-level format should certainly be enough to eradicate any nasties (although I've heard anecdotal evidence of spyware surviving such extreme actions). At the worst, a secure erase utility could be used to repeatedly wipe a hard drive. There is of course the unpleasant possibility that NTFS alternate data streams could be used to hide malware (such as in "rootkits"), but I'm not conversant enought to speak to it.
It does indeed boggle the mind that someone with such experience and erudition could take such a disposable approach to a system. Norton Ghost and Acronis are readily available and could restore his system to a known good state at any time (indeed, don't many public libraries and other public access points re-image their public Internet-facing PCs nightly?).
It's a very troubling trend to see that disposable attitudes such as this, as it's an implicit statement that the criminals and amoral corporations behind malware are winning.
3 - Nancy
Why aren't these amoral corporations being prosecuted, & their assets & those of their officers being confiscated to the point of having their fillings removed? Why aren't they being jailed? If they can create all the myriad ways to find information and/or infiltrate everybody, are those on the 'right' side so inept they can't trace & counter these assholes & put them out of business permanently?
4 - andy marsh
Where is this company...think i wanna go do a little dumpster diving!