[June 4, 2004]

"Companies are playing both sides in the war on spyware; applauded for fighting the internet scourge by offering consumers feeble anti-spyware services, while working to preserve marketing relationships with the very companies filling your PC with garbage. Spyware "removal" tools that don't actually remove spyware, or products that refuse to remove adware of marketing partners—are becoming all too common in a war on spyware that's little more than a well staged song and dance.

Earthlink recently received webwide applause for releasing a new anti-spyware application that detected all of the assorted marketing nasties on your PC. The glorious press release served its purposed, pegging the company as a kind and concerned netizen, while Earthlink also kindly offered a new stat page that tracks just how serious the problem has become.

"There are Twenty-Eight instances of spyware on each user's PC!" the company proudly proclaimed.

Of the hundreds of outlets that covered the story and heaped praise on the ISP, only a handful actually mentioned that once the application identifies all of this foul malodourousness, it simply then leaves it all intact. Earthlink was in essence praised for standing in a street and pointing to a mugging...."

—Karl Bode, of Broadband Reports