Click here for REASON # 3 WHY TO BUY A APPLE COMPUTER INSTEAD OF MICROSOFT SOFTWARE PC.  Spyware, PC Viruses and Adware, They can even use your computer's microphone and video camera to send sound and images—again, without your knowledge—out into the world.

We're Stung By Snoopers' Bugs 

The Web bugs were crawling, and the congressmen panicked. They had seen the enemy of privacy, and now they wanted to figure out how to stop the devilish little programs, which are fast becoming one of the main threats to healthy Internet life.

Broadly speaking, Web bugs come in several varieties. Some take the form of a one-pixel graphic-tiny and transparent and therefore invisible. These ubiquitous creatures are routinely placed on Web pages and in e-mail messages without your knowledge. Because they communicate back to a server, they can be used to track your movements on the Web and report on when (or whether) you read someone's marketing pitch. More-insidious strains, incorporating snippets of computer code, can invade one's hard disk and copy personal or business files. They can even use your computer's microphone and video camera to send sound and images—again, without your knowledge—out into the world. And all of this can occur despite firewalls and other security protection installed on your computer.

The power of Web bugs to nibble away at your privacy was amply demonstrated at a hearing this spring, when four of the most powerful members of Congress who deal with privacy issues discovered just how little they knew about Web bugs, and how scant is the legal protection against this intrusion into our personal space. The congressmen, who form the heart of the bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, were shocked to watch a witness go online to place such a bug on a Web site during testimony—and then see it quickly infiltrate the computer in the hearing room, copying files from the hard drive without leaving a trace. Later, they watched as an e-mail message was monitored after it had reached its recipients. "Needless to say," the congressmen wrote in a letter to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, "we find this to be very disconcerting."

I call it spooky-big time. Fortunately, the four who signed the letter (Republicans Sen. Richard Shelby and Rep. Joe Barton, and Democrats Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Edward Markey) have some clout, and their complaint to the FCC might bear some results. Problem is, any bug-killing bill will be opposed by the Internet marketing community, which hopes to use the technique to mine and resell your personal data.

Several efforts—including those of the nonprofit Privacy Foundation and the data-security firm Intelytics—are now afoot to develop and distribute software that would combat Web bugs. Meanwhile, however, the bugs continue to proliferate: A survey by Intelytics of 51 million Web pages last holiday shopping season found that more than 109 million bugs had been implanted. On one page alone, there were 30 invisible bugs poised to pounce on your computer and your life.

SEEN & HEARD

On another front, Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) are cosponsoring a simple but potentially very effective law designed to improve privacy protection on the Web. Boxer told Ray Publishing that whenever you sign on to a site, a question will pop up asking if you want shared with others any information you are about to provide while visiting that site. Simple "yes" and "no" check boxes will be provided, and it is difficult to see how there can be an objection to that. Shows how naive I am: The same senators tried this in the last Congress, and the proposal was ultimately killed by lobbyists. But this season, the public is far more aroused, and Boxer tells me she believes that e-mails to members of Congress could turn the tide.