Wired Magazine recently reported that seven rent-to-own companies and a software manufacturer are settling charges with the Federal Trade Commission. The charges claimed that computers rented from the rent-to-own companies used pre-installed spyware to obtain a host of data from the users. The settlement only requires the companies to stop using the spyware, known as “Detective Mode,” which has been installed on as many as 420,000 rental computers. In addition to secretly turning on a computer’s webcam, the software was capable of logging keystrokes, and taking screen shots of a user’s activity. The software then transmitted the secretly gathered information to the manufacturer, DesignerWare, who forwarded the material on to the rent-to-own company, all without the user’s knowledge. The settlement still allows the rent-to-own companies to employ the software so long as they notify the renters. Further, the FTC lacks criminal jurisdiction, so the companies have yet to face any criminal charges. However, the FTC acknowledged that criminal activity appears to have occurred in a nod to the potential for ongoing investigations.
The computers at issue collected everything from addresses, photos and video of often compromising situations, to phone numbers, email and social media passwords and financial logins, begging the question of what type and how much information a user should feel comfortable entering on a computer they don’t own. In the case of someone renting a computer, it can be easy to see how a user operates under the impression that they have unfettered access to the machine for the term of the rental. Nonetheless, there are measures that such parties can take in an effort to secure their privacy. There are free firewall programs, such as Zone Alarm and Windows Firewall, that allow users to designate and monitor every program that accesses and/or attempts to access outbound internet connections. Had the renters correctly configured and employed such a program, they would have known that a program, by whatever name, was attempting to send information from the subject computer. In the event that renters were unable to install or configure (in the case of pre-installed Windows Firewall) such programs, it should serve as a red flag to carefully consider the manner in which to employ a rental or loaner computer.
