MediaPost: Spyware Report Raises Broader Questions

It was once that just adware companies worried about getting painted with an overly-broad "spyware" brush, but now mainstream sites that use cookies for tracking are also finding themselves more and more lumped into the same bucket. A study by Earthlink and Webroot released yesterday found that the average scan of consumer PC's found more than 25 instances of "spyware," yet the firms included ad tracking cookies as part of that total, prompting defensive reactions by industry figures.

Much like in the brief explosion of privacy concerns seen in the late 1990s, some types of web firms - in this case, conventional ad supported sites that lack tracking - are trying to point at other firms' technologies as potentially harmful. This process is frequently abetted by firms conducting self-serving research; for instance by those selling anti-spyware software. But, as in the late 1990s, regulators, legislators and consumers tend not to have the sophistication to draw fine distinctions between these different tracking mechanisms, and overly-broad regulation may limit not just nefarious practices, but also useful advertising functions, such as frequency capping and behavioral targeting.