Stop Badware Coalition

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Google, Lenovo, Sun Microsystems have banned together to create the Stop Badware Coalition, at stopbadware.org. This just a few weeks after members of the Anti-Spyware Coalition had agreed on the methods for identifying and fighting spyware.

A coalition of tech companies, consumer groups and other organizations hopes to do to companies that spread spyware and adware what “America’s Most Wanted” has done to fugitives–stop them in their tracks by publicizing their misdeeds.

The newly formed Stop Badware Coalition will publish the names of companies that it deems are the worst offenders and show how they make money through unethical marketing practices and fraud.

Joining the coalition are search giant Google, PC maker Lenovo, Sun Microsystems, Consumer Reports’ WebWatch project, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Oxford Internet Institute in England. Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, now Google’s chief Internet evangelist, and Esther Dyson, an investor and editor of Release 1.0, are among the advisors to the group. (Release 1.0 is owned by CNET Networks, publisher of News.com.) Source: News.com.

We Say: This is great, the more organizations we have fighting spyware, the more people we will have around to catch them when they are really bad. But, come on, badware? So, now we have badware, spyware, adware, scumware, malware, parasiteware, stealware, any others you all can think of? We need a coalition to decide what we want to call all of this stuff, because there are just too many names for it, but I guess that is because each coalition can’t own spyware.com. It’s all wasteware, because it wastes resources, time and money.