There has been a lot of press lately about Microsoft AntiSpyware and the fact that they downgraded the cookies from Claria to suggest that you ignore them and leave them on your machine. I thought that I would weigh in on the issue with my opinion.

Let me state some of my observations on the issue:

1. This is a very politically charged issue. What one person calls a piece of spyware someone else calls a critical piece of their application. I don't think I have seen 2 different people describe spyware or adware the same way. What may seem to you like a very obvious definition may not meet someone else's definition.
2. Microsoft is a very large company. It is possible that at some level they are negotiating with Claria but in another part of the company they could/would know nothing about that. I find it hard to believe that someone high up in Microsoft would tell one of the "knowledge workers" what they are planning so I believe them when they say that there was no undue influence to downgrade the Claria cookies.
3. I really hate spyware/adware/trojan horses/viruses/etc. but in the world we live in they are a fact of life just like crime, terrorism, and really stupid drivers. It would be nice to think that we could get rid of them but as long as there is money to be made or power to be gained with spyware/adware there will be unscrupulous people who will try to profit from it.
4. I think that Microsoft might be looking at the GAIN technology from Claria to help them catch up to some of their competitiors in the online advertising space. It makes good business sense for Microsoft to gain access to the technology and even to the data that has been collected. From a strictly objective standpoint I have to say I can understand why Microsoft would be interested. From a fairness point I don't like the idea. By even talking to these guys (and I don't know for sure that they are or are not) it seems to legitimize what they have done. It seems to violate the "cheaters never prosper" rule.
5. Whether we like it or not there are all sorts of situations where we are being observed to help advertisers. Some examples are the information that TiVo collects. In their privacy statement they are clear that they collect aggregate data about what is watched. This came to the forefront after the SuperBowl "wardrobe malfunction" when they reported a lot of people viewing the halftime show. Also I have heard that a lot of stores use their survelance cameras to not only watch for shoplifters but to determine the places that people go in the store so they can place the products that they want you to buy there. I have noticed that around here they put something that looks like a garden hose across the street hooked up to a machine that counts how many vehicles cross it. A few months back there was a bilboard along the freeway touting how many cars passed by that point each year. In each of these cases someone is collecting anonymous data about where we go and what we do.
6. In a lot of cases we are willing to give up our annonymity in order to gain something that we value. A big example of this are the store loyalty cards where we give up our personal information and in return get discounts on the items in the store.

So, what do I think should be done? Well here are my by no means original suggestions:

1. I realize that Microsoft can't let us know who they might be negotiating with but they could do a better job of showing how they have separated the parts of the company that are responsible for security from any other politics in the company. If they did a better job of showing how they are separated (and not just when something like this comes up) then a lot of the rumors would be nipped in the bud.
2. I would like to see more choices for me as a user. Let me see what you have put in as defaults and let me change them. I would love to be able to go in and tell it that I don't want cookies from Claria, doubleclick.net, or a bunch of other companies.
3. Along the same categories I would like to see information from "spynet". That is whre you send your choices on what to allow and what not to allow. If I don't have time to look up a particular company or if I just don't know whether I should allow something to run I would like to see a graph or something saying that 18% of the people let it run and 82% blocked it. Of course that is not foolproof but it would help to make a decision of the percentages were skewed to one side or the other.
4. I would love to see the AntiSpyware tied into the browser settings. One of my complaints about tools like AdAware is that once I tell it to delete a cookie it doesn't automatically block that cookie so it will probably show up agian unless I go and tell IE to block it.
5. I would like some way to move my cookie preferences from one machine to another without having to export parts of the registry and import them onto another machine. I notice that I get different cookies on my work and home machines. I would like to combine the settings to block and allow cookies so I don't have to keep setting it on other machines.

So I don't think that this will change the debate or the world for that matter but I do hope that I have been clear and very understandable. As always let me know your opinion.