A committee of the US House of Representatives has backed new legislation to outlaw spyware. Two previous attempts to create such laws have been blocked by the US Congress’s other chamber, the Senate.
The chairman of the next committee which will judge the bill – the full Energy and Commerce Committee of the House – said that there was unanimity that the bill is a good idea. The bill has just been endorsed by a sub-committee of that body.
Spyware generally refers to any software that is installed on a person’s computer without their knowledge and that reports certain information to a third party. The term is sometimes used to include adware, a more benign variant that subjects surfers to advertising; but the more malicious variety can be used by hackers to steal credit card or other personal information, for example by logging keystrokes and sending the information to another computer.
Spyware can be illegal in the UK under the Computer Misuse Act and adware can fall foul of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations if it is installed by stealth. But in the US, previous attempts to control both spyware and adware at the federal level have failed.
In both 2004 and 2005 the House of Represenatives passed legislation specifically geared towards making spyware illegal. In both cases the laws were ignored by the Senate, so did not become law.
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