Spyware Land
Chapter Three
I really can't remember the first time I heard the term 'spyware'. At first it didn't seem like much, maybe tracking cookies that would let someone know where all I went on the Internet. I didn't like it much, but no real danger, or so I thought. Oh, innocent thought! How I wish that were true!
The true facts of spyware are varied. It can be a tracking cookie, a program that causes irritating popup ads, a script to make my homepage change to another site, (where I don't want to go) or it can be a silent program to let someone know what my passwords are to my banking site so they can clean out my account!
Spyware is the common name for a large number of sneaky and stealthy programs planted on a computer without the owner's consent or knowledge.
It really can be called 'malware'. This covers the whole spectrum of bad stuff, hijackers, keyloggers, a program that will capture every keystroke a user makes (how they can steal my passwords), Trojans, worms, rootkits that are really hard to find and remove, just a plethora of bad stuff! There is so much of it out there we can't stay ahead of it all.
There are some free programs to eliminate spyware, but the fact of the matter is, no one program will catch and remove it all. We need at least three removers and sometimes more!
The free programs do find and remove most of the spyware, but there are some really nasty things out there that require a commercial spyware remover like Webroot's SpySweeper or Computer Associate's PestPatrol and even then some things can get through. I have found that using Mozilla's Firefox to be the best deterrent, but sooner or later this may not be the case!
Copyright November 2005