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[goodcow]

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/05/24/020250.shtml?tid=103&tid=17

House Passes Spyware Bills
United States
Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday May 24, @05:49AM
from the listen-to-the-law dept.
stinerman writes "Today the house passed two bills aimed at stopping spyware / adware and unauthorized use of computers. H.R. 29 makes it 'unlawful for any person who is not the owner or authorized user of a protected computer to engage in deceptive acts or practices'. H.R. 744 (I-SPY Act) prohibits accessing a protected system via code copied on to the system to, among other things, disseminate personal information. Both bills sailed through the house and are expected to be passed by the Senate."

 

[galeninjapan]

Is it really that hard for windows to do what macs do and ask for a password anytime something is being installed? Or can spyware still get through?

 

[borghe]

the problem is that windows (in the home) never used anything equivalent to a user (the system was always wide open with no security) and by the time they got around to starting to use users, the default user was always system administrator.

 

[goodcow]

Is it really that hard for windows to do what macs do and ask for a password anytime something is being installed? Or can spyware still get through?

This is exactly what Longhorn is going to do.

 

[Ecrofirt]

you'd still have the problem of idiotic users who choose to go password-less

 

[StrikerObi]

Is it really that hard for windows to do what macs do and ask for a password anytime something is being installed? Or can spyware still get through?

Half the time it doesn't ask for passwords. I've dragged an app from a disk image to my Apps folder and it doesn't always ask for a password.

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

Really nasty spyware has found ways around the password and security options on many Windows computers. Of course, the real problem still lies with the idiots who are using the machine.

 

[Macam]

Is it really that hard for windows to do what macs do and ask for a password anytime something is being installed? Or can spyware still get through?

Of course spyware can still get through. Asking incessantly for your password, even legitimately, creates a social engineering problem since you create the pattern of users being accustomed to simply forking over their password when prompted so a malicious program could easily deceive users into handing it over. Even so, there are always way around even relatively solid OS foundations, such as Apple's Dashboard widget fiasco.