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Originally Posted by meld51
Well this is all very good talk but none of it hits the point. It's a moral question of choice and the right to privacy. Tracking cookies and spyware in general are a breach of privacy. It is little different to having your phone line tapped....which is illegal.
I for one wish to know who I am giving info to. It is underhanded and downright nasty to sneak data from your PC....just like rumaging through your rubbish bin.
I know of no way to keep this stuff off of your PC though; does anyone else?
Oh well, rant over....
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There are various products that can help protect against, or delete spyware. Three examples being Adaware, Spybot and SpywareGuard. Adaware can check for and delete common spyware, Spybot and SpywareGuard both stop any activex based spyware installing (they trick Internet Explorer into thinking the spyware is already installed, therefore it won't install it). Microsoft have just released an Anti spyware program too, but I have only just installed it although it seems quite thorough. Microsoft's program can check for spyware, and optionally stop programs altering certain parts of windows (such as adding themselves to the startup list).
Morally, spyware is wrong. Legally it is also often wrong, but any legal action may be difficult to persue as Spyware writers often fairly effectively hide their identities.
You can stop cookies being installed in the preferences/properties windows of most browsers. In Internet Explorer, go to "Tools", "Options" then "Privacy". There is a slider that has various levels of security on it. Usually it is set to "Medium", however if you click "Advanced", you can customise the privacy settings. You can also set the Privacy settings to High, then add any sites you want to use cookies to a list of sites you want to use cookies.
Bear in mind, however, that if you totally block cookies to all sites then a lot of sites (including cableforum) will not work properly. To give an example, if you stop Cableforum writing cookies, you have to log in each time you reply to a thread or (I think) view some threads. You also lose access to the User Control Panel..