Marketscore and Higher Ed

[Steve Brukbacher <sab2 () UWM EDU>]

Hello,
This is an interesting article about Marketscore.  The VP of marketscore
is apparently taking issue with higher education.

http://news.com.com/ComScore+Spyware+or+researchware+-+page+3/2100-1032_3-5494004-3.html?tag=st.next

or
http://tinyurl.com/6vj54

Particularly, see this part on the first page

"There's a small group of people in universities who've taken it upon
themselves to take an issue with our software," said Dan Hess, senior
vice president of industry analysis at ComScore. "We're trying to make
them fully aware of the nature of our (products and services). It's a
completely voluntary program."

And then this excellent rebuttal from Steven Schuster from Cornell on
pages 2 and 3......
"They may be upfront up about it, and you can put the pieces together,
but it requires a full understanding of network security and of
legalese," said Steven Jay Schuster, security director at Cornell
University, which recently warned students of potential spyware dangers
in Marketscore.

From my vantage point, their claim of speeding up your internet
experience is flimsy at best, at worst fraudulent.  Their website is
doing exactly what malware always does; claims to do one thing while its
true intent is something entirely different.
http://www.marketscore.com/Home.aspx


The article also claims that Marketscore does the following:

"To compile data, Marketscore redirects Internet traffic through its own
servers and decrypts secure data transfers between a PC user and a Web
site using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the de facto security standard
for e-commerce transactions. Doing so, it can collect highly personal
information, including bank passwords, health data and credit card
numbers."



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Steve Brukbacher
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Information Security Coordinator
UWM Computer Security Web Site www.security.uwm.edu

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