Spyware Is a Virus

It started out as a trickle. Our help desk was getting calls about slow PCs, Web browsers that weren't functioning correctly and home pages that had magically changed to some site called "aboutblank." Soon, the drip turned into a stream of phone calls with the appearance of additional tool bars, rogue registry entries and Web browsers that were popping up stuff all over the screen. Then, here in Florida, hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne seemed to coincide with the flood of adware and spyware that inundated our network and swamped our clients.

Seemingly overnight, these software parasites have become a big problem that our $200,000 worth of firewall, anti-virus, Web content and anti-spam tools can't touch. Out of 400 users, we are rebuilding on average two machines per week due to unremovable spyware that rendered the computers inoperable. Updated service packs help, but only marginally. I'm getting tired of playing defense. Every time I've reduced my spam to only 10 percent, gone an entire year without contracting a crippling virus and kept under the radar screen from denial-of-service attacks, wham! There's yet another application, another server, another layer of protection, another expense we have to eat in order to keep other people from forcing stuff on us that we don't want.

I have two options: kill our Internet use entirely or seek out more tools to keep the crap out, which is a bone of contention in itself. Why isn't my enterprise anti-virus software stopping the onslaught of spyware? I consider it splitting hairs to differentiate between viruses and spyware. It's like going to the doctor and being told he or she can't treat you because your insurance covers only viral infections, and your infection just happens to be bacterial. It's ludicrous.

Just so we're all on the same page: Spyware is a virus. There. I said it. Spyware loads without the user's permission, it runs invasive processes and it will eventually burn down your machine. Look around, and you will find anti-virus software vendors beginning to address the spyware problem by adding modules to their products, which, of course, cost extra since they don't consider spyware a virus. The anti-virus vendors' dictionaries are woefully inadequate, stopping less than 50 percent of the parasites. To really put a dent in the current spyware/virus problem, it would require loading three or more separate spyware clients, where each product's dictionary identifies spyware that the others had missed.

So it's off to the Internet to seek the best enterprise adware/spyware blocker money can buy. It would be nice to find an application that offered a site manager that would allow us to push it out to the clients and monitor and update them at the enterprise level. Oh, well. Where's my wallet?

Brett Arquette is chief technology officer for the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in Orlando, Fla., and editor in chief of the Court Technology Forum (www.courtechforum.com). His e-mail address is brett@arquettes.com. Free Spectrum is a forum for the IT community and welcomes contributions. Send submissions to free_spectrum@ziffdavis.com.

Check out eWEEK.com's Security Center for the latest security news, reviews and analysis.

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Google Adsense - The Easiest Money To Make Online?

Google Adsense - The Easiest Money To Make Online?

For the last couple of months, Google Adsense has dominated forums, discussions and newsletters all over the Internet. Already, there are tales of fabulous riches to be made and millions made by those who are just working from home. It seems that Google Adsense have already dominated the internet marketing business and is now considered the easiest way to making money online.

The key to success with Adsense is the placing of ads on pages that are receiving high traffic for high demand keywords. The higher the cost-per-click to the advertiser, the more you will receive per click from your site. Obviously, it does not pay to target low cost-per-click keywords and place them on pages that do not receive hits.

With all the people getting online and clicking away everyday, it is no wonder why Google Adsense has become an instant hit.

For some who are just new to this market, it would be a blow to their pride knowing that their homepage is buried somewhere in the little ads promoting other people’s services. But then, when they get the idea that they are actually earning more money that way, all doubts and skepticism is laid to rest.

There are two major, and clever, factors that some successful webmaster and publishers are learning to blend together in order to make money easier using Adsense.

1. Targeting high traffic pages on your website. If you check on your logs, you will discover that many of your visitors are taking advantage of the free affiliate marketing resources and ebooks that you are offering on your site. In simple words, your ads are working effectively and are generating more clicks. It also means more money for you.

2. Placing Adsense links on pages that are producing little, or better yet, no profit. By placing Adsense on a free resources page, you will reduce the amount of potential customers being lost to other sites. Tricky, but effective nonetheless.

When learned to work effectively, these two factors are actually a good source of producing a minimal amount of revenue from a high traffic page. Many people are using this strategy to pick up some extra and cash with Adsense. This is also especially rewarding to informational sites that focus their efforts on delivering powerful affiliate link free content to their visitors. Now they can gain a monetary return on their services.

With the many techniques that people are now learning on how to make the easiest money by their Adsense, it is not surprising that Google is trying everything to update and polish their Adsense in order to maintain their good image.

The possibility of adding is 2nd tier in Adsense is not impossible. With all the people spending more time in their Adsense now and still more getting into this line of marketing, there is no doubt about the many new improvements yet to be made. Imagine the smiles on the faces of the webmasters and publishers all around the world if ever they sign up for sub-affiliates and double or even triple the amount that they are already earning.

The one particularly handy money-making feature that is available with Adsense now is the ability to filter out up to 200 urls. These gives webmasters the option to block out low value offers from their pages as well as competitors to their websites. Talk about taking only those that are advantageous and discarding the ones that seem “useless”.

With Google Adsense, the possibilities are limitless. Yet there is also the possibility of someone taking advantage of the easy money process that this internet marketing is doing. If you think more about it, these negative factors may force Google to break down and thrash Adsense in the process. If that happens, people would have to go back to the old ways of internet marketing that does not make money online as easy as Adsense.

For now, however, Google Adsense is here to stay. As long as there are people wanting to earn some easy cash online just using their talents, the future ahead is looking good. Besides with all the strict guidelines that Google is enforcing over Adsense, it will take awhile for the Adsense privileges to be spammed and even terminated.