Spyware Based ID Theft Ring Uncovered

phaedo00 wrote to mention an Ars Technica article discussing a massive identity theft ring uncovered by security software firm Sunbelt. From the article:"According to one of their employees, Alex Eckelberry, during the course of one of their recent investigations into a particular Spyware application--rumored to be called CoolWebSearch--they've discovered that the personal information of those 'infected' was being captured and uploaded to a server."

Wow...

[HyperShadowDC]

I have had to delete this numerous times on my parent's computers... I'm gonna have to go and make sure it's still not on there.

Pedantic comment

[SA Stevens]

How can it be called ID Theft if the original owner still has his identity?

Re:Pedantic comment

[Dunbal]

How can it be called ID Theft if the original owner still has his identity?

      You're right. It sounds more like ID Piracy arr arr...! That's good, everyone knows the penalties for piracy are much steeper than those for theft...(ducking).

Re:It's unbelievable at times

[rathehun]

I spent an hour downloading CWSShredder, Spybot, Ad-Awaare, et al before I connected to the 'net.

How?