The other day, I was reading an eWeek article entitled Researchers Say Automated IM Worm Is Inevitable about the supposed inevitable wide-spread attack coming over one of the large public IM networks. While the large public networks have been in the news a lot recently about small-scale worms and other problems, even I was a bit skeptical, thinking that this was mostly just spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
Today's news showed me that it wasn't FUD after all: Worm with rootkit hits AOL chat service. It begins: "Links leading to a worm that eventually implants a nasty rootkit on a user's computer are popping up on America Online Inc.'s Instant Messenger network, security researchers said." This is probably the worst of the exploits against any of the public IM networks, and is of great concern to me for all of the non-savvy users out there that will inevitably end up being exploited.
I was reading recently (I forget now exactly where, sorry) that Internet users have less trust in online sites than they used to, and are more reluctant to purchase via the Web than before. Worms, viruses, phishing attacks, adware, spyware, etc are all lowering consumers' confidence in the Internet. While in some ways this is good that people are becoming more skeptical and savvy online, fear of the Internet is not a good thing. Are we headed towards the collapse of the Internet as we know it today? Will this useful world of information, news, stores and much more turn into a useless quagmire of spam, spim, ads, spyware, phishing attacks, etc?
Is this the beginning of the end? Or will software and service companies across the board rise to the challenge of protecting the consumer and restoring trust in the online world? I can't answer for anyone else, but that's exactly what BitWise has been doing for almost four years now. Our software has no ads and has never bundled spyware. Your username and email address have never been disclosed or sold. Your private conversations are encrypted, for free. We have recently introduced BitWise Plus that provides proven identity management capabilities.
Almost since the beginning, people have clamored for us to be a "multi-service" client, connecting to the "big 4" networks. Perhaps now it is more clear why we have not. More than ever, we still think we're making the right decision. What do you think?
Agreed. Besides, the people who want to connect to fifteen IM services at once are simply the "I want to feel really good about myself by proving how many friends I have" type of people. While a customer is a customer, I'm not sure these folks do more good than stay clear of the other services.