Karsten Self who oversees a children's computer lab at a youth center in Napa, California, spends about a half-hour each morning electronically scanning 10 PCs. He is searching for files and traces of code that threaten to hijack the computers by silently monitoring the children's online activities or by plastering their screens with dizzying -- and nearly unstoppable -- onslaughts of pop-up advertisements.
To safeguard the children's computers, Self has installed a battery of protective software products and new Web browsers. That has kept some -- but by no means all -- of the youth center's digital intruders at bay.
"You would expect that you could use these systems in a safe and sane way, but the fact of the matter is that you can't unless you have a fair amount of knowledge, time to fix the problems and paranoia," he said.
The parasitic files that have beset Self and other frustrated computer users are known, in tech argot, as spyware and adware. The rapid proliferation of such programs has brought Internet use to a stark crossroads, as many consumers now see the Web as a battlefield strewn with land mines.
"Adware has its place, but to grab market share I think a lot of companies are doing things that make consumers feel betrayed," said Wayne Porter, co-founder of Spyware-Guide.com, a Web site that tracks adware and spyware abuses. "I think we're at a very important inflection point that is going to decide how the Internet operates."
The exact definitions of spyware and adware, like many things in the ever-changing world of the Internet, remain open to debate. But spyware generally refers to programs that reside in hidden corners of a computer's hard drive and record confidential information like keystrokes, passwords and the history of Web sites a user visits. Some of the most insidious versions have to be installed on a computer by someone other than the user -- maybe by a jealous spouse or lover.
Adware, for its part, marries old-fashioned highway billboard pitches to online distribution and the possibility of immediate response. Adware vendors range from fly-by-night operators who hawk pornography and gambling wherever they can to more legitimate companies like the Claria Corp, which tries to aim its ads at the consumers deemed most likely to respond based on their surfing habits. Claria alone has about 29 million users running its adware products on their computers, according to comScore Media Metrix, an Internet research firm.
That compares with 1.5 million users in early 2000, according to a company news release. Spyware and adware often creep onto a computer's hard drive unannounced, often by piggybacking on other software programs that people download or by sneaking through backdoor security gaps in Web browsers when consumers visit certain sites.
For all the differences between spyware and adware, their impact on computer users is pretty much the same: an Internet experience clogged with pop-up traffic jams; computer screens that are suddenly transformed into digital versions of Times Square; and overburdened PCs that operate much more slowly as they struggle with random and uncontrollable processes triggered from the hard drive. Small wonder that consumers are throwing their hands up in despair.
"From what consumers are telling us, they feel like their computers are being taken away from them," Porter said. "We have some consumers saying it makes them hesitant to use the Internet at all because of what an annoyance it has become."
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