Staying spyware free on the Internet

We have done it before and we keep doing it, downloading free software that contains spyware, malware, and deceptive adware. This type of software tracks your online browsing and feeds that information back to shady marketing groups. It also slows down you computer and eventually you're forced to spend hours trying to clean up your computer.

You end up spending money on software that should keep your computer safe from this type malicious software, but chances are it won't keep you 100% safe. The number of websites going up each day that are trying to trick you into downloading spyware grows at an alarming rate. So what else can you do to stay ahead?

An organization that calls itself StopBadware.org is a "Neighbourhood Watch" campaign aimed at fighting malicious software. You and everyone else in the world that has been infected with malicious software can report websites that are spreading malware to StopBadware.org by submitting your malware story.

Everyone can benefit from this greatly, because before downloading anything you can go to StopBadware.org and run a URL search to see if the website you're downloading software from has been reported by anyone in the world for spreading malicious software. This will not keep you 100% safe, but it's another prevention step you can take to keep your computer spyware free.

So who is behind this organization?

This initiative is led by
- Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
- Oxford University's Oxford Internet Institute

Also several prominent tech companies are supporting this initiative
- Google, doesn't need an introduction
- Lenovo
- Sun Microsystems
- Consumer Reports WebWatch

If you use Google as your search engine, they are now presenting people with a warning before they visit websites that have been reported to StopBadware.org

Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Presentations Online..

Internet website technology is evolving at a very quick pace and many companies are looking to deliver new software applications on-line to everyone. Applications that usually run on your computer like spreadsheets, word processing, presentation creation are moving online.

What do you benefit from when using these applications online?

• The ability to edit your documents from anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection and a web browser


• Share your document with co-workers / friends and collaborate together to finish your document


• Give your presentations online to your customers which saves you time from flying to your customers site to give the presentation

At this time it's free to use all of these services which is nice, but can you trust these companies to keep your personal information private and secure. I say nothing is 100% secure, if it's sitting on a server that is connected to the internet. It's really up to you to contact the company and find out:

• How they are keeping your document information secure?


• If your data is lost or stolen, is the company responsible? Will they compensate you in any way?


• Read the privacy policy, will they share information about you and your documents with anyone?

I have tried the services of ThinkFree, the company allows you to create WORD, EXCEL and POWER POINT compatible documents online. They give you 1 Gigabyte of space online to store your documents. When you edit your documents, the look and feel is exactly like working with your desktop applications. You can share your documents with friends or the whole world by posting the document on DOC EXCHANGE. ThinkFree does version control for you, so if you would like to backup to a older version of your document you can. Now on the technical side, the application you use to create your document with is a Java Applet that is downloaded to your computer on initial use (you won't need to download it again). You will need to have the Sun Java Run-time environment downloaded to your computer, which is almost guaranteed that you do since a lot of websites today use this technology. Once downloaded the performance is allright on wireless. I imagine it would be faster if I was connected over ethernet to my router (actually I'll do that test and provide more feedback). Also I really would like to see a "File -> Exit" command in the Power Edit mode, just to make the exit more like a desktop application. Clicking on the X to close the Window doesn't leave me with a comfortable feeling that the file was closed propertly.

I have also tried the services of Google, which allow you to do word processing and spreadsheets online. The Google application is a true web application, meaning you don't have to download anything to use it. The features are not as rich as ThinkFree but one feature that I liked (not included on ThinkFree) is that you can export your documents in PDF format which is good (I stand corrected; you can export to PDF in ThinkFree, thanks jcrow). Google also gives you lots of space to store your files.

One last service that I almost tried but didn't is Zoho , they allow you to do word processing, spreadsheets and online presentation just like ThinkFree. I didn't try it because of their privacy policy..

With whom we share Information

We have partners/affiliates/resellers for specific products and services. We may share generic aggregated demographic information with our business partners/affiliates/ resellers and advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person. Your name and email address may occasionally be shared with our business partners/ affiliates/resellers in connection with our products/services and any use of your personal information by such business partners/ affiliates/resellers will be in accordance with this privacy policy. We do not share the contents of documents, to-do list and other data related to Zoho account maintained and stored by us with any third party.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't try their service, as long as you're comfortable with their privacy policy.

These companies are doing something right because Microsoft is moving their Office Suite online as well. Initially it's free (during beta period) but then it's $29.95/month.

Here is an interesting article from Business Week Magazine on the strategy of Microsoft for the on-line Office product.