Utah is the only state with a law against spyware, and some debate Tuesday at the National Conference of State Legislatures focused on whether other states should have their own laws or whether the matter should be left to the federal government.

During a session focusing on fighting Internet fraud, Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said he preferred federal legislation that would combat Internet fraud across a variety of technologies.

Most spyware activity is already against the law anyway, he said. "Most of this is already illegal, but we're having problems with enforcement," Schwartz said.

Utah's Spyware Control Act is designed to cut down on spyware by making it illegal to create or install spyware software, which monitors Internet activity and sends that information elsewhere, usually without the user being aware of it or consenting to it. The law also hopes to curb pop-up advertising on the Internet.

The act, passed earlier this year, has not yet been enforced because it is the subject of a constitutionality lawsuit filed by a company that enables pop-up ads.

But the act's sponsor, Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, said Tuesday that "there's a great role for states to get involved in this" and noted that Utah's law may need to be altered.

"It's wonderful that we can have a variety of approaches," Urquhart said. "Some will be successful; some won't be so successful. We will learn from those, we will continue to improve, whereas the federal government — it's not that they pass better legislation than the states; often it's the opposite — but there you get one crack at it, and let's hope that if they want to pre-empt us right away that they're geniuses on this and they can do it right the first time."

Urquhart said both individual and corporate computer users need protection against pop-up ads, which he said try to "steal a sale."

"We need to not only protect consumers, but we need to protect businesses in their venture in the e-commerce route," he said. "Think of your butcher, your baker, your candlestick maker, as they sit in a brick-and-mortar environment. No one can pop up at the point of purchase at the cash register and say, 'Hey, we'd like you to buy this instead.' That doesn't happen. You can advertise outside the store, but once inside the store, they don't."

Schwartz and officials from America Online Inc. and PayPal Inc. all said better law enforcement, better technological blocks and better consumer education and awareness will help fight Internet fraud in its various forms.

Charles Stiles, technical manager for anti-spam operations for AOL, said spam e-mail can steal user identities, property and information.

"Everything you see on your computer could be used against you as the spammer looks at everything, and he will have access to all the information that you do," Stiles said.

Spam trouble at AOL is down from two years ago, but the company still gets 6 million to 10 million complaints daily about the problem, blocks a daily average of 2.4 billion messages from entering the AOL network, and deposits 130 million messages in members' spam folders. The company also shuts down lots of accounts because members may not realize their computers are being used to send out spam.

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