The Stop Badware Coalition, consisting of technology firms, academics and consumer advocates, is declaring war against malware with the launch of a website to help protect consumers and take the fight to companies that dupe online users into downloading spyware and unwanted adware, reports the Mercury News. Harvard University's Berkman Center and Oxford's Internet Institute, together with Consumer Reports, have put the effort together. Google, Lenovo and Sun Microsystems are providing funding for the multimillion-dollar project.

The public face of the coalition will be www.stopbadware.org, where users can find out whether programs they'd like to download may be harmful; the can also alert others about malware that they have found, writes CNET. The coalition will publish guidelines that define what it calls "badware."

The news of the coalition's formation comes two weeks after the Anti-Spyware Coalition - comprising Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Symantec, Computer Associates and McAfee - announced it had agreed on how to identify and combat spyware.