INSTRUSION IN THE INTERNET WORLD

Four types of intrusions are prevalent in the Internet world of today. First is the intrusion of unsolicited, non-relevant pop-up window advertisements. These windows are generally sent to a local workstation when the user links to a site that has contracted to provide the vehicle (usually a legitimate IP address) for pushing the advertising to a potential customer. Some of these are the result of some analysis and targeting based on data collected by or through the linking site, but many are simply pushed to all users.

A second type of intrusion is the spurious collection of personal, personally identifiable, and proprietary information. This type of information collection could include surreptitious collection of any data stored on a computer that is connected to the Internet. In addition, data unrelated to a given interaction or transaction are often requested, and sometimes even required, to be entered by the user in order to access the needed website. Among the many uses for information collected in this way is the generation of intrusive advertising windows and advertising spam e-mails. Data collected in these ways are often combined into databases and sold or used repeatedly in ways the unsuspecting user has no knowledge of.

Intrusions are also created when products called “scumware” change the

appearance of Web pages that are being browsed. The link to this type of software is often under the guise of a free service or utility that is going to make something the user wants to do easier or better .But the reality is that scumware floats pop-up ads over other content, inserts its own hyperlinks into a user’s view of a Web page, and reroutes existing links to unauthorized sites. Many times these changes are simply inconvenient to the user in terms of dealing with multiple windows, but other difficulties arise frequently, including attempts to communicate outside the firewall and difficulties in accomplishing simple close-window operations. The final type of intrusion relates to unsolicited e-mail. Unsolicited e-mail is often generated when the e-mail address is used in some public forum such as a chat, instant message, or a game site or when it is harvested by scumware,spyware, sniffers, snoopers, and similar software products.

E-mail addresses are also shared and sold by many Internet page owners who might have collected the information for a purpose and find there is a market for their database of addresses. Unsolicited commercial e-mail is commonly known as “spam.” Other sources of unsolicited e-mail include mailing lists of friends, relatives, coworkers, and outside business associates who broadcast messages of humor, inspiration, human interest, or personal activities or perspectives. Finally, e-mails are generated by software that either results from the activity of a virus or carries a virus capable of infecting the recipient’s computer.