Lee, As always, many, many thanks! You are MOST knowledgeable.
John > From: Lee Larson <leelarson at mac.com> > Reply-To: macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu > Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 13:01:33 -0500 > To: macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu > Subject: Re: MacGroup: Detective Programs > > On Sunday, January 13, 2002, at 09:34 AM, profile wrote: > >> Just how good are these and can he learn what is on her computer, what >> Web >> sites she visits, the contents of her emails, etc. etc. >> >> Does anyone know much about these and what they can do...also, if she >> were >> to change to a MAC would that help. >> > I've been interested in these programs for quite a while. What they do > is give a front end that searches all the public records databases they > can get into. There's a lot of information that businesses and > government agencies are tossing online for no good reason other than > their own convenience. They are allowed to do this because we don't have > strong privacy laws. > > These programs don't track e-mail or surfing because to do so would > require them to secretly place software on the user's machine, or at the > user's ISP. Placing such software on a user's machine violates > wiretapping laws. At the ISP end, it is unclear because it depends on > the privacy policy of your ISP. (Who bothers to read that?) But, it's > unlikely that an ex-spouse would be able to get such cooperation from a > reputable ISP. > > E-mail does not have the privacy protection of telephone calls or > regular mail, although it does have some. An ISP is permitted to read > mail stored on its system, but pretty much everyone else is forbidden to > do so. The privacy rights for e-mail are outlined in the Electronic > Communications Privacy Act. > > There have been a series of worms for Microsoft Outlook that can install > a script that watches what you do and e-mails reports to somebody else. > I know of no such worms that work on the Mac. > > There are also simple JavaScripts that, when embedded in HTML mail, > allows someone who sends you that email to see what you wrote when you > forward it with a comment to someone else. These will work in e-mail > programs that have JavaScript capability, such as Netscape Communicator > and Mozilla. They will probably work on the Mac, Windows, Linux and > anywhere else that these programs run. > > Finally, in answer to your question, changing to a Mac wouldn't hurt > because there are far fewer worms and trojans for the classical Mac OS, > and none (so far as I know) for Mac OS X. It is extremely hard to > install snooping software on a properly maintained Mac OS X system. > > But, changing platforms is unlikely to help in this case. > > --- > Lee Larson, Mathematics Department, University of Louisville > Phone: 502-852-6826 FAX: 502-852-7132 > > > The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be January 22. > For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of > activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>. > > The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be January 22. For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>.
