Editor's note: Nata contacted us last week to say she had been suffering massive hard drive problems, but she read us her column over the telephone. You've gotta love someone who understands deadlines.

Okay, so they weren't shot. But the Federal Trade Commission has taken the first step in getting rid of spyware; last week the FTC asked a US District Court to shut down the operations of the companies involved in making Spy Wiper and Spy Deleter. Among other things, Spy Wiper and Spy Deleter first hijack your computer, and then send you popup ads offering to sell you a program that will un-hijack it. FTC acting director of consumer protection Lydia Parnes was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, "Selling software to fix a problem that you've caused is the very definition of "online chutzpah."

I had an item last time about the virus writers who were having a hard time getting jobs; now I've found a story about the teenager who wrote the code that has been used to send out phishing emails using US Bank's logo. He says it's against hacker ethics to get involved with spamming, but said he couldn't find another job. I have six words for him: "Would you like fries with that?". Recent phishing expeditions have been regarding eBay, SunTrust, Visa and Wells Fargo.

Google has pulled a stunt worthy of Microsoft by announcing its desktop search engine, effectively saying that you don't need the operating to find things -- you can do it without using Windows. Since Google has been in the news so much lately, I've been wandering a lot, and found two sites that look like fun: one has a list of "Google hacks" and the other is the aptly-named Can't Find On Google. The second one can be entirely too addicting.