Pesach Lattin, CEO of AdBUMb (a big newseletter for the online advertising community) has taken a stand on spyware.
His blog entry here.
“…there can be no doubt anymore that much of the adware industry is not legit. And there is no doubt that much of this industry is plainly illegal. Even the largest companies have, at the least, benefited from illegal actions—and, at the most, they have actively participated in methods of infiltrating/hacking into computers in order to install their adware. Consumers have said over and over again that they do not want this software on their computers, never asked for it and are not going to take it. Run a search on any adware company, and you get millions of hits of consumers complaining about it being installed on their computers without permission.”
Alex Eckelberry