The Need For An Anti-Spyware Utility

I'm going to start off by telling you a little story about a young law student who was in the middle of writing out her thesis on money laundering. She would go onto her favorite search engines and easily find the information she was looking for. Then to her surprise, as she went to go back to those websites, she found that she was being forcefully redirected to completely different websites that were not related.

She assumed at first that it was only a small glitch with the internet or with the search engine she was using, but the problem persisted and she started becoming suspicious that someone had somehow bugged her computer. This law student was faced with the kind of computer bug that cannot be easily fended off. To make things worse, she was not a very technologically savvy kind of person and she also never used her laptop for anything other than research of for writing her papers.

The above story is not a one off case. Many people find themselves tangled up in problems that are mind boggling for the average person but can easily be answered for with two common words being: spyware and adware. The term spyware, was actually first coined in 1995 but became popular in the year of 2000. Spyware is referred to any computer program that is installed on computers secretly so that they can access the private and personal information of the PC's users.

The way this is done, is by recording all of your keyboard strokes and is also known as "keylogging", looking at the history of your browser and also by scanning the contents of your hard drives for useful information. You would think that these kinds of things would be found in an action movie, but the reality is that we can all become victims of spyware. No body wants to be watched while they are online. Spyware used to spy on criminals would be beneficial to society but criminals use spyware to grab credit card numbers and bank account details from innocent people.

In just the US alone, identity theft is rampant and so is the theft of personal property from the unwanted transfer of ownership of goods to wrong people because of a stolen credit card number or from the unknown transfer of funds from your online banking account.

What people can do to protect themselves is to install anti-spyware software that will block and delete any of these dangerous programs hiding in your computer system and others that are really similar such as malware and adware. There are many spyware removal utilities that come with a free scan so you can see what is hiding in your PC before you make a decision about purchasing one. The main purpose of these applications is to delete any pre-existing spyware or to find them as soon as they are introduced into the computer.

Adware, spyware and malware are different to the normal virus that primarily just re-creates itself to cause damage to the files of your computer, however, they are known to be just as disrupting. One common experience amongst people who have computers infected with spyware is the sudden slowness of the computer. You may even notice that your PC takes a long time just to start up. It becomes a pain in the neck for those who have to work all day on a computer as they lose much precious time from a slower computer.

Spyware has been known to act in a similar way to viruses in that it can automatically change your security settings on your system that allows other dangerous programs to enter your PC. This type of aggressive spyware has been known to actually shut down antivirus programs and even spyware removal software so that you can't use them to remove the programs causing all of the problems.

Most of the time, nothing even happens to the people who create and distribute the spyware programs. As there are new threats being released daily, it is best policy to have an anti-spyware utility at the ready so that you can prevent any future attack and to protect your private details.



By: Robert Kokozka 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Get your free trial of the world's leading anti spyware software called Spyware Doctor from PC Tools. Scan your whole PC right now for free and check out my review of this program at http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=87784

3 Things You Must Know About Spyware

1)Spyware is on your system. Like it or not, statistically speaking, you probably have spyware on your machine right now. There are so many malicious programs floating around out there that one or two have bound to have gotten past all of your security settings. McAfee and Norton Anti Virus are both excellent programs, but even they can be beaten by the determined spyware makers and distributors. One recent computer repair man said, close to 80% of the machines that he services have spyware on them. I believe it. Spyware can be sneaky and it can install quietly without your knowledge. Your system probably has spyware on it; make sure it doesn't corrupt your data files or worse.

2)Spyware attacks through certain programs. One program that seems to have been a magnet for spyware on my machine has been my browser (one that is distributed by a major computer comapany). Maybe I didn't update my security settings or maybe they were not strong enough but somehow, somewhere, my previous browser seems to have been vulnerable to spyware attacks. Switching to an open source browser (FireFox) was like night and day. Firefox hasn't seemed to let any spyware install itself so far. I switched about 6 months ago. If you haven't tried Firefox, you might consider downloading a trial copy.

3)You need to get some form of protection against spyware. There are all sorts of companies out there claiming to have the magic cure for spyware. Some work fantastically, some don't work as well. Finding the spyware removal “silver bullet” isn't as hard as it seems, but it does take some work and a little bit of research. I use several programs on my new machine that I am typing this on. The hardest part is getting spyware off of your machine once it is installed, so you don't want it to get on your machine to begin with. Using the right type of browser (as mentioned above) is one of the best ways to insure you don't have to spend a lot of time cleaning your machine.


By : Richard Martin 
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

This article may be freely reproduced and distributed as long it is not altered and the link below is kept live. To watch a free video about spyware, visit http://www.spyware-tutorial.com and learn how to protect your computer today.