Adware and spyware are the bane of existence for all Windows users. Maintaining up to date anti-virus and anti-spyware systems is hard enough but now Microsoft wants to create “adware framework” and embed it into Windows.

The patent was filed for such a system and is said to use “context data” from your hard drive to display advertisements appropriate to the content it finds. The ads would then supply advertising revenue to whatever company’s product it is advertising to you.

Microsoft’s adware system will sort through all your data including document files, email, music files, podcasts, computer settings and computer messages.

So if your computer has low memory you might get an ad from Newegg asking if you want to buy more memory for your computer, which would be a good thing, even if it is unwanted because for me there is nothing worse than using a computer with low amounts of memory but then I know when to upgrade a system and when to leave it alone.

Ads would be limited to something around 4 per hour and will only support text or graphical ads so in theory; your system will not be bogged down by tons of ads popping up all over the place. If you want that, just download every file from every untrustworthy source on the internet.

It’s amazing no one has thought of this before, organized spyware but it sounds a lot more like “organized crime” and we all know how well that worked out for the criminals but not so well for everyone else that wasn’t part of a “mob.” In this case the “mob” is Microsoft and they want to extort money from you.

I don’t think the likes of Spybot, Adaware or even McAfee will take too well to this idea. If Microsoft does make such a system mandatory, I’m sure one of the above will create a tool for removing it without impacting your system.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 1:50 pm under Microsoft.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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