On Monday, May 23, 2005 Congress passed two separate bills designed to take the spy out of spyware. The first bill, the Internet Spyware Prevention Act of 2005 (I-SPY) imposes stiffer jail sentences and multi-million-dollar fines for those convicted of distributing spyware. The second bill, Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (SPY Act) also imposes stiffer penalties upon conviction, but it goes a step further and imposes stricter policies regarding opt-in notices and consent agreements.

Yahoo's current privacy policy is causing consternation among some users who object to their use of so-called 'web beacons'. Known in most circles as web bugs, these invisible images are embedded in websites and email and used to track your surfing - and even tell whether you've opened a particular email. According to Yahoo's current privacy policy, "Yahoo!'s practice is to include web beacons in HTML-formatted email messages that Yahoo!, or its agents, sends in order to determine which email messages were opened and to note whether a message was acted upon."

Some anti-spyware scanners, notable Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy, routinely tag related.htm as Alexa spyware. What's being tagged as spyware, however, is nothing more than a registry key that points to a search page that will only be used if you enable the related links feature.

In December 2004, Microsoft announced they had acquired the anti-spyware developer Giant Software. And on January 6th, 2005, Microsoft debuted the public beta of Microsoft AntiSpyware.

The headline of an August 2004 press release from EarthLink screams, "TWO MILLION SCANS UNCOVER 55 MILLION INSTANCES OF SPYWARE". And the same source reports that as of Sept 27, 2004, a total of 3,219,855 had uncovered an average of 26 traces of spyware per scan. But the EarthLink report, compiled in partnership with Webroot Software - the developer of Spy Sweeper - when read carefully reveals the problem may be far less significant.

Such idle phrases are not lost on privacy advocates who fear they may one day become chillingly true. Technology dubbed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is being fitted to a chip the size of a rice grain that can be embedded in clothing and other devices and allow tracking via the Internet.

Spybot Search and Destroy, a.k.a. Spybot-S&D (or just plain Spybot), is one of the most capable anti-spyware packages available. It is also free. Developed by Patrick M. Kolla of PepsiMK, the Spybot-S&D program has won numerous awards - including the coveted PC World Best Buy and World Class awards.

Considering the lengths some companies will go to in order to ensure their adware/spyware cannot be easily removed, the best protection is prevention. Fortunately, preventing adware and spyware is simple enough and won't cost you a dime.

Often accused of being drive-by downloads, these pesky Internet parasites can quickly take advantage of an improperly secured system, embedding themselves as a "browser help object" and redirecting you to a host of unsavory sites.

Of all forms of Adware and Spyware, Xupiter Toolbar seems to take the lead in creating angst among users. Much of the angst stems from users who feel certain they never knowingly agreed to the installation of Xupiter Toolbar. Others unwittingly installed the program after downloading and running other software. In either case, following the steps outlined in Preventing Adware & Spyware will keep unwanted programs (including Xupiter) from automatically installing themselves and help you avoid installing potentially malicious ones.