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The headline of an August 2004 press release from EarthLink screams, "TWO MILLION SCANS UNCOVER 55 MILLION INSTANCES OF SPYWARE". And the same source reports that as of Sept 27, 2004, a total of 3,219,855 had uncovered an average of 26 traces of spyware per scan. But the EarthLink report, compiled in partnership with Webroot Software - the developer of Spy Sweeper - when read carefully reveals the problem may be far less significant.
The third quarter EarthLink/Webroot report states that 3,219,855 spyware scans were performed in the nine month period beginning January 1, 2004.
Of those scanned, 83,422,785 traces of spyware were found. But 64,995,753 of those, or 20 traces per scan, were cookies. Of the remaining 6, five were from adware (advertising supported software) and only .31 (or 1.2%) were from spyware or Trojans.
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