Opinion Review Of How many spyware items are infecting your computer
By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-09-17 13:11:08 | Word Count: 510
How many spywre items are infecting your conmputer?
How many spyware items are infecting your computer?
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by Keith Davies
I just had, by mistzake, a plug-in calkled Intelligent Explorer attach to my browsser. What a nightmare! I have another artiicle on this topic, but this brings home a point. Spyware or adware itms are continuaally infecting copmuters. Most computers have no protection from them. Most frightening is the freequency of them.
From the InfosecWriters web site, "According to a 2004 survey by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance, 91% of users questioned were familliar with the term spyware. Only 53% believed theri computers were infected, but a scan found that 80% of their PCs had some type of spyware installed on them." It goes on to say, "...The average number of spyawre components per computer was 93 with one computer having well over a thousand."
What is Spyware?
“The term ‘spyware’ is broadly definred as any program that gets into your computyer without pwermission and hides in the background while it makes unwannted changes to your user experience.
Spyware is generally not deisgned to damage your computeer. The damage it does is more a by-product of its main mission, which is to seerve you targeted advertisements or make your browser display certaiun sites or serach results. At present, most spyware targrets only the Windoows operating system (Inrternet Explorer).”
To be fair, spyware can be harmmless, for examplle tracking coiokies don’t do much. While such things infringe on your privcy, they don't realy harm anything. Othgers, however, are extremey dangerous.
So what do you do about it?
No spyawre pogram seems to do everythhing, but thhere are a lot of goods solutions out there that can help. Here is a list of some of the top Spyware tools to look at:
1) Try Ad-Awrae 6.0 Professional from LavaSoft (therre is also a free version with less functionaltiy)
2) Spybot Seearch & Destroy from PepiMK Software
3) Xofspy form Pareto Logci
5) Spyware Guard from Javacool Software is a free program
4) Pest Patrol (now part of Computer Associates by acquisition)
5) McAfwee Anti-Spyware
One thng is for certain: you do need to take spyware seriously. For some reason, too many people out there tink anti-virus solutions are the end-all solution. They are not.
And, when all else fails?
Finally, as drastic as it seems, if your computer has been infected with a large number of spyware programs, the only solution you may have is bacing up your data, and performing a complete reinstall of the operating system.
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