Spyware Horror Story: Do you know your hacker?
It's tempting to jam criminal hackers into a safe, distant profile. To assume the creep helping themselves to your e-mail, bank account, and surf history is a smug, slaphappy youth, or conniving foreign national. But what if you discovered that the one spying on your life was someone much, much closer?
How close? Like a parent, spouse, roommate, or significant other.
This is the topic of today's meeting in Washington. The Anti-Spyware Coalition gathered with representatives from McAfee and Google, to discuss the extent to which spyware abuse also constitutes domestic abuse.
Anna Stepanov, the Anti-Spyware program manager at McAfee Avert Labs, said surveillance is an indispensable tool to an abuser's material and psychological advantage over the victim.
Stepanov writes in a report (PDF), that "the use of spyware is ideal for abusers, who often feel the need to control all aspects of a victim's existence. Monitoring a victim's online, cell phone, or general computing activity is of more value than ever in controlling or hurting a victim."
It is a controversial topic, parents "spy" on kids, but we call it parental protection. Jealous spouses and significant others peek into in-boxes and cell phone texts and it's deemed a minor, or perhaps even warranted, transgression. Corporations have even been known to spy on reporters (but that one's a clear no-no.)
Where does one draw the line between the minor abuse of a suspecting spouse logging on to an e-mail account and the major personal and psychological trespass attendant to domestic abuse? While monitoring software is legal, and indeed, hosted on CNET Download.com, it's clearly not always used to keep children from peeping adult sites before they come of age. A clearer answer may well develop from today's or future meetings, but in the meantime, let us get your opinion.
Should definitions of domestic abuse include legal as well as illegal surveillance software? Are there acceptable limits to this? Share your views in the comments below.
Via Defense in Depth.
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Jessica Dolcourt reviews the latest and greatest smartphone apps, in addition to a healthy dose of Windows software. E-mail Jessica and follow her on Twitter. 
One of the reasons why I say get rid of the statutory rape and 'child sexual abuse' laws and start putting more responsibility on children from the age of 2 to tell someone if they don't like the way they are touching them.
Personally, I have told my daughters that if they don't want someone to touch them in some way, they are to tell them that and if they don't stop, they are to come to get me. I have ALSO told them however, and meant it, that if they want someone to touch them, even on their genitals, that is their prerogative and they are allowed to do that and give permission for the person to do that.
Really, most of the 'abuse' of children that goes on is because we have forced pedosexuals into the shadows. Most of them are not the 'big, bad child rapist' (speaking from being a pedosexual myself), but are simply people who are sexually attracted to children of various ages and ASK them for sexual encounters, which the children are usually game for and that causes NO harm until the parents and society come in and start filling the children's heads with the ******** that they were 'used' and 'abused'. That is what causes most of the 'harm' there - that ******** that the parents tell them and they automatically believe it because of the BS that we tell them that "Mommy and Daddy will never lie to you!".... something I know from personal experience is not the case!
I know that from experience, I was 'sexually abused' from the time I was 7 and loved it! The feeling of closeness with the adult in question, the fact that they treated me like an equal, etc.
In fact, I call it consensual sex, not 'sexual abuse' which is a made-up thing by feminists who don't want their daughters to realize that they can be JUST AS HAPPY being a stay-at-home mother as being a working woman, can be happy not being married but having children for their 'men', and can be happy having sex outside of marriage.
Frankly, the best thing that we could do for children is to monitor their social lives but not dictate who they see or what they do, unless they are in danger of causing physical injury to SOMEONE ELSE. Not themselves, someone else.
It's as they say: you cannot learn unless you are allowed to make your own choices and your own 'mistakes' (though those are usually just someone else saying you have made a mistake).
My children, I do not bother monitoring them on the internet. Why? Because I have told them that if they are going to meet someone from online offline, they are to have me with them (and I have gone with them many times to meet someone who they have met online to give them my 'sniff test').
That is the only time I feel that they are in any true danger, when they go to meet someone from online in real life, and that is why I have told them that they are to have me go with them to meet the person in question, at least the first time.
- by hydrosummer March 8, 2008 9:47 AM PST
- Personally I don't have kids or want any but I also believe that monitoring ANYONE thats on your personal computer is ok and something you need to do. With kids...well they have no rights until their of legal age and are easily persuaded by online predators, no matter how well you think you know your kids, predators will get to know them better and become their bestest fwiends. SO MONITOR!! I don't use virus protection or any adware programs only firewall and browse using Firfox. If their were random people using my computer then I would use antivirus.
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