| This is the year the Internet officially stopped being fun. The festering problems of spam, spyware, viruses, worms and pop-ups boiled over, making the online experience merely annoying at best, financially and emotionally destructive at worst.
Users of Microsoft Windows found themselves in the bull's-eye — years of inattention to security issues in Redmond, Wash., left them exposed to the Blaster worm, the Sobig virus, Messenger Service pop-ups, spyware infestations and worse, while Mac and Linux users missed out on all the "fun." Sick of spyware? Download AdAware (www.lavasoftusa.com) or Spybot Search and Destroy (www.spybot.info). Need a firewall? Download the free ZoneAlarm (www.zonelabs.com). Tired of pop-up ads? Install the Google Toolbar add-on for Internet Explorer — or switch to such competing browsers as Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird, which block pop-ups and offer tabbed browsing, possibly the greatest advance in Web software since the bookmarks menu. Unfortunately, no developer has found a bulletproof solution for spam. Filtering has improved a great deal — for instance, the new mail-management features in Microsoft's Outlook 2003 made it the company's most welcome software release this year — and challenge-response systems can eliminate spam completely for users whose e-mail usage fits the right pattern. But the best defense against spam remains keeping your e-mail address as obscure as possible. When an obscure Utah software firm can claim that it owns part of the Linux operating system and demand royalty payments (without offering public proof!), when Microsoft must redesign its Web browser because a programmer got a patent for an obvious way to add multimedia to Web pages, and when manufacturers of things ranging from printer cartridges to garage-door openers get sued under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, no developer or consumer can be safe. Is that the future we want to live in? |
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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