I don’t think this stuff is THAT hard in most cases (I am aware of the tracking cookies issue but most spyware solutions I’ve used lately are very clear about that, and you can deselect them from your scan).

As I mentioned in my post, what will be more interesting to me is the notion of consent. I believe there are plenty of people out there who install software and yet don’t really understand the nature of what the software is doing yet will consent to it nonetheless, simply by clicking the “I accept” button and not reading the policy/license/terms of use.

Most, if not all, anti-spyware products fall squarely into the FUD camp. Fear, uncertainty and doubt works once, IMHO, and quickly loses any shred of respect. Sure, it is tempting to run to management with a report from any spyware product and receive money to “take care of the problem” but how many times will that work?

It is annoying how reputable antispyware products identify so many benign cookies as SPYWARE! (See how much we need their products and how much damage is being done to our systems?) At a minimum the more credible companies would break down miscreants into distinct buckets like: cookies, adware delivery, keystroke logging, redirectors, unknown.

Then at least we can’t be accused of crying wolf (as often as we seem to).