Your Privacy vs. Their Profit

Computer spyware is noxious and harmful and must be stopped as soon as people can figure out exactly what it is, members of a Senate subcommittee said on Tuesday.

Programs that secretly track computer users' activities are becoming an online scourge rivaling spam and should be outlawed before they prompt consumers to abandon the Internet, members of the Senate communications subcommittee said.

But a bill sponsored by committee members will need to define the problem precisely to avoid outlawing pop-up ads and other annoying but essentially harmless technologies, consumer and business advocates said.

"We really have to spend a little time, take a deep breath and define what we're after here," said Jerry Berman, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a consumer-advocacy group.

Like last year's congressional debate about spam, much rests on the definition of what constitutes legitimate marketing activity and what should be outlawed.

Some online advertisers and song-swapping networks like Kazaa place programs on users' computers to monitor their activity, or harness their processors for other activities.

Other programs secretly track users' keystrokes to lift passwords and credit-card numbers, or sell "fixes" for software problems they create.

At least one state legislature has already passed an anti-spyware bill, prompting a business group to call for a national law to avoid conflicts.

"There should be a single federal standard that preempts existing state laws," said Robert Holleyman, president of the Business Software Alliance.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Conrad Burns would require companies to obtain permission before installing a piece of software on a consumer's computer, and provide an easy way for the consumer to remove the software if he wished.

"It's my computer; it's my private property," the Montana Republican said. "I bought it and paid for it for my use only, not some leech."

One purveyor of pop-up ads said his software was actually less intrusive than traditional advertising methods because it does not rely on databases that amass personal details about consumers.

Consumers know when WhenU.com's pop-up software has been installed and can uninstall it easily -- as 80 percent of those who downloaded it have done, said company president Avi Nader.

Burns seemed convinced by Nader's testimony, and said business groups would need to define unacceptable behavior to pinpoint the problem.

"Mr. Nader is in a legitimate business," Burns said.