Second SpyAudit Report
 |  | http://www.securitymanager.net/magazine/article_517_second_spyaudit_report.html |
Webroot Software, a producer of award-winning privacy, protection and performance software, and EarthLink, one of the nation's leading Internet service providers, released their second SpyAudit Report, which tracks the growth of spyware on consumer PCs.
Among the key findings, the report revealed that, for the year to date,
more than 500,000 system monitors and Trojan horses have been discovered from
the roughly 1.5 million SpyAudit scans completed. Overall, approximately 41
million traces, at an average of 27.5 per machine, have been found. The
complete report is available here.
"The SpyAudit's popularity shows that consumers want to find out what is
on their computers," said David Moll, Webroot's CEO. "Based on the
overwhelming number of spyware traces identified in just four months, we urge
consumers to run an audit as soon as possible to determine if they have
spyware on their PCs and then take action to manage it."
"Consumers should be aware of the applications and files residing
and
running on their machines," stated Matt Cobb, EarthLink vice president of core
applications. "While certain types of spyware are malicious, other programs
can be used to improve their Internet experience.
"When Internet users discover harmful spyware, they need to immediately
immobilize or remove the programs that they don't want on their machines,"
Cobb added.
System monitors and Trojan horses are two types of dangerous spyware
applications. System monitors are designed to keep track of a consumer's
computer activity and can record virtually everything a user does online.
Trojan horses are applications that appear as requested software programs, but
instead facilitate theft of computer data by permitting hackers to gain
unrestricted access to computers while Web surfers are online.
The information below depicts the growth from March to April,
and the
running four-month total number of scans, spyware found on scanned PCs, and a
per-PC count of spy instances, along with a categorical breakdown of spyware
installations.
| Overall Results | Month of March |
Month of April |
Total (Jan. 1 - April 30, 2004) |
| SpyAudit Scans | 237,199 | 420,761 |
1,483,517 |
| Spyware Instances Found | 7,086,770 | 11,305,471 |
40,846,089 |
| Instances of Spyware per Scanned PC | 29.9 | 26.9 |
27.5 |
| Spyware Installations on Scanned PCs by Category | |
| |
| Adware | 1,262,078 | 2,298,201 | 7,642,556
|
| Adware Cookie | 5,750,392 | 8,873,555 |
32,700,340 |
| System Monitor | 35,915 | 60,873 | 245,432
|
| Trojans | 38,385 | 72,842 | 257,761 |
The results from the SpyAudit report are culled from EarthLink and
Webroot's SpyAudit detection programs that run analyses of Internet users PCs
and provide audited reports of spyware residing on the machines. The SpyAudit
report charts the overall number of scans and figures for each of the defined
spyware categories from January 1, 2004 to April 30, 2004.
To further inform consumers about the dangers of spyware,
EarthLink and
Webroot offer SpyAudit, a free-of-charge spyware detection program. SpyAudit
provides a fast, detailed report in minutes and is available to all Internet
users at www.webroot.com or
at www.earthlink.net.Published: 06/2004
Author: EarthLink
