Saturday, April 08, 2006

cellphone spyware part 2 1/2

ok so there's apparently some confusion over my previous post about neo-call... i'm going to try and make this as simple as possible, both for the benefit of the confused and as an object lesson for everyone else...

softWARE that can SPY on someone is SPYWARE... this shouldn't be rocket science to anyone... flexispy and neo-call's spyphone both enable spying and so are both spyware...

software that does something bad (like for example spying on people) without disclosing that fact is a trojan horse program... neither flexispy nor neo-call's spyphone let the person being spied on know that it's spying on them, they both do something bad without disclosing the fact and thus are both trojans...

the fact that neo-call's spyphone is several times more expensive than flexispy doesn't stop it from being spyware or a trojan, it just makes it an expensive spyware trojan...

the fact that the installer generated by neo-call, when you give them the code for the target phone, can only be used on that phone doesn't stop it from being a spyware trojan, it just makes it a more limited spyware trojan...

the fact that flexispy can be installed on many phones does not make it a virus... many programs can be installed on many phones, that has nothing to do with being a virus and being a virus has nothing to do with why f-secure added detection for flexispy...

the fact that flexispy has a hidden menu is not what makes it bad and the absense of a similar menu doesn't make neo-call's spyphone good... flexispy is bad because it hides it's menu and every other indication that it's installed (in other words, it doesn't disclose it's spying nature) - neo-call's spyphone has no menu to hide but still hides all the other indications that it's installed and therefore is equally bad...

in short - neo-call's spyphone is just as bad as flexispy, it is just as much a spyware trojan as flexispy... it's limitations (the high cost per installation) make it a much smaller risk to the public, however, and that is why anti-virus vendors don't take it as seriously as they do flexispy...

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