Senate Subcommittee Discusses How to Define "Spyware"

Computer "spyware" is noxious and harmful and must be stopped as soon as people can figure out exactly what it is, members of a Senate subcommittee said. Programs that secretly track computer users' activities are becoming an online scourge rivaling "spam" e-mail and should be outlawed before they prompt consumers to abandon the Internet, members of the Senate communications subcommittee said.