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Let's be honest; when you click "Agree," and check the box that says, "I have read the above license and agreement and agree to abide by its terms," how many of those times have you really read whole thing? Once? Twice? Seen one, seen them all?

It's ok to admit it; we are all guilty of it at times. License agreements used to be standard affairs and you could get away with it; the old pattern included a part about it not being the company's fault if you were stupid and misused the program, a part about not reverse engineering and stealing the program, and then a part about not transferring the program to a country the U.S.A. currently had a trade embargo on.

But now, every company (scrupulous and not) is sculpting their agreements in different ways to reach their goals, and the end user (you and me) has to be more cautious then ever.

Companies creating programs such as the virus-filled file-downloading utility called Kazaa bank on the fact that most people don't really want to read 15 pages of legal mumbo jumbo about reverse engineering and copyright infringement information that does not even apply to the vast majority of users. So, deep down in their agreement, they hide the nefarious little lines of text that can cause so many problems.

Unfortunately for those who'd rather just slap the next button as fast as they can, software developers have grown smarter, and now they are making sure that they cover themselves from potential lawsuits by having the user essentially say, "Yes, please install much spyware on my computer." Because, when you click "Agree," that is exactly what you are doing; you are agreeing with everything written in that license, whether you have read it or not.

I have worked cleaning viruses and spyware infections from computers for the last six or seven years, and I can say easily that the vast majority of infections are not caused by downloading some mysterious file that accidentally gets installed; the infections are caused by programs intentionally installed by the user, but programs with loopholes and security risks in the license agreements that the user did not read.

Obviously, there are a lot of programs of ill-repute (such as Kazaa) that are teeming with these license agreement add-ins, because that's what the programs are all about. What is becoming a disturbing trend is how many legitimate programs have dangerous things hidden in their license agreements.

I recently ran into a license agreement that totally blew me away. I was installing

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