My Journey Into Spyware Land

Chapter Two

The next scourge of the Internet came along, and it's name was/is SPAM!

It came rushing into email inboxes everywhere and some of it was not nice. Really not nice. These aggravating, irritating messages were and are still, trying to sell us everything from illegal software to porn, drugs to whatever!

We deleted them all everyday to have the same deluge again the next day. This caused us to try all sorts of things to try to stop this onslaught of slime. We learned how to make filters for our email clients and block senders. We got 'throw-away' email addresses. We tried Spam catcher programs. They helped to delete it, but nothing stopped it from coming. As soon as we blocked one entrance, they would find another!

For quite a while it seemed like there was virus, virus everywhere! And in a sense, it was everywhere and remains so today. It requires keeping an updated virus scanner running on your computer all the time.

But that isn't all! Someone really clever (and warped) figured out a way to get into a computer that was connected to the Internet even though it had a virus scanner. And a group of malcontents known as 'script kiddies' were taking delight in hacking into computers, deleting files and creating general havoc.

So now we had to get a firewall for our computers! This was starting to get expensive for poor folks like me! A virus scanner and now a firewall.

Fortunately there are some enterprising individuals and companies who decided it would be a good idea to offer free versions of their virus scanners and firewalls. After all, if all of the personal computers got infected with virus or were made un-usable, then there wouldn't be many customers for their software. And if they offered free versions that did the job, then maybe the people would decide to get a better, perhaps faster and with more options copy of the freeware program and upgrade to a paid version.

Soon most of the folks in user groups or Yahoo Groups started talking about the free programs and for a lot of people looking for help, things got better. For a while, that is.