A new industry consortium has been formed to improve the battle against spyware.

The group is a who's-who in the world of computer security, including McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, ICSA Labs and Thompson Cyber Security Labs.

It's all jolly great that vendors are trying to kill the spyware pest, but what's up with all these groups and alliances? Last week we saw the creation of the Stopbadware.org programme, spearheaded by the universities of Oxford and Harvard and funded by Sun Microsystems and Google, among others.

And then there is the anti-spyware coalition, whose members among others include McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro and ICSA Labs.

From the looks of it, the Coalition and the new consortium are doing about the same work. But as things go, a smaller group moves faster than a big one. Add the fact that three of the world's largest security vendors are involved in the new consortium, and they are in a good position to force their will upon their peers this way.

Tags: spyware, anti spyware coalition, badware