What is Spyware:

The administrator of any site you visit can find out your IP (then your location, place of work, ISP), hostname, language settings, operating system, browser/version, screen resolution, referrer (site you came from), and exit page (site you left to). A prolific advertising system can find out even more since they can track your movement across several websites to get an overall picture of what you are interested in, and allow them to target you with relevant advertising.

The first spyware started out as a simple persistent browser cookie which assisted in doing this. Over the years the line between spyware, viruses, and email worms was so blurred that the terms became interchangeable. Today any self-respecting antivirus package will include a module dedicated to detecting spyware.

To me, Spyware is any unwanted part of a software package that is installed, or launched without user consent that doesn’t have a simple built-in method to remove or stop it. At best, this will needlessly consume memory and CPU resources slowing down both your PC and internet connection. At worst, it will forcibly flood you with advertising, render your system helpless, and/or turn your PC into a spam mail distribution drone which will get your IP blacklisted on many mail servers. In some cases it will distribute itself to all your email contacts (including family and business associates). I’ve listed below some helpful tips and my favorite software to detect and counter-act this type of threat on windows XP.

Know Your Startups:

Startups are programs which are launched automatically with windows. Some of them announce their presence by displaying an icon next to your system clock. Others just lurk silently consuming your resources. If you don’t want a particular piece of software to launch automatically, first look within its options for any setting to disable automatic startup. If you can’t find any such option you’ll have to stop the program from starting up manually.

While you can look within the startup folder on the start menu, or use the built-in msconfig tool, or even check the run/runonce keys within your registry, but you will only be scratching the surface. The best and simplest tool to detect and disable startups is called Autoruns. It can be downloaded freely here.

Autoruns was created by an outfit called sysinternals which not long ago was taken over by Microsoft. Luckily MS decided to maintain and update their utilities as freeware. Once you run it, autoruns will automatically scan your system and within a few seconds have a list of all startups categorized by type.

Click thumbnail to enlarge:

Unless you know what you’re removing the recommended method is to uncheck the checkbox next to a particular startup (as opposed to deleting it), and if on the next reboot you find that you want it back, you can simply check it. The difficult part is telling which startups it is safe to remove. To assist with this, autoruns will display the full path of each item, which company it was manufactured by, and if you right click the item, and select search online, it will automatically search for that item within your browser. (on firefox it will use whichever search engine is listed first on your search bar). Alternately you can export the list and email it to someone more technical to review. Autoruns will even allow you to remove annoying items from your windows/IE context (right-click) menu.

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I am answering MMM’s tag by listing 6 of my quirks, but I’m going to restrict myself to one topic, television!

1. Viewing Time: On average I watch about 20 minutes of live TV per week, and even then only because I happen to be in the living room when one of my sisters is watching.

2. Favorite Program: The perfect TV station plays nothing but Star Trek from all its incarnations (except Enterprise). I recently acquired 5 complete seasons of DS9 as a first step towards setting up my own 24 hour Star Trek Channel! Beyond that I like the Satellite movie channels (on Showtime/Orbit).

3. Commercial Break: One reason I don’t like TV is that I despise commercials. I normally mute the TV during the breaks. In a sense we are the sum of our memories. Some people watch 2-4 hours of TV per day. This means they are subjected to a minimum of 30-60 minutes of commercials. A study where people were shown the first 5 seconds of various commercials established that they were able to recollect the rest of the commercial, even when it’s 10-20 year old. The same people often could not recall what they had for lunch 2 days ago.

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I was napping when I heard a knock. I reluctantly got up, and opened the door only to find a total stranger. He introduced himself and explained he’s from out of town, and works with my sister. We shook hands and then without further introductions he asked me what I do, and who I work for. He then asked how much money I make! I was half asleep, so I told him. He then excused himself, and left towards the living room. I went back to sleep making a mental note to ask my sister about this later.

What kind of person asks someone they’ve never met, and will likely never see again how much money they make ? Why would they care ? I always considered this question something only your bank, accountant, parent, or prospective inlaws may ask. Yet I know several people who ask it on a regular basis, and one person in particular (a multimillionaire) who asks for an update every time I see him.

It pains me to see hypocrisy or deception, but I always thought being materialistic is something to be ashamed of. They say the eyes are windows to the soul. I look in these people’s eyes, and I only see dollar signs.

In January Tala reported that google sent a delegation to Jordan university to discuss the possibility of a new regional office. This month, Google posted 3 Job Positions in the (Middle East) region. These are under a separate category from job listings for its existing offices in Egypt and UAE. The open positions are: Site Director, Software Engineer, and Tech Lead Manager. The Site Director listing includes the wording (fit well in an informal startup environment) which implies a new site. Fluency in Arabic is required for two of the positions, and recommended for the third which eliminates the possibility of a European office.

Posts advertising the opening have appeared across the net on employment sites like Bayt, Monster, and blogs like Jazzarah and even Jordanblogs . Many are attributed to Executive Google Recruiter Nabil Khatib listed in (Linkedin) and (ZoomInfo). One posting dated last week appears on Jordan’s own Linux User Group. It indicates that Google is “strongly leaning toward a location in Amman, Jordan”.

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One of the new words I learned when I started working in Amman is (Asfeen). My colleagues define it as (anyone who says something negative about another employee to their supervisor). Personally I would qualify that definition to (anyone who complains to the employee’s supervisor without first trying to work out the problem directly with the employee).

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