Foreword By The Editor

The following article by Benjamin Williams is a brief overview of two of the most serious malware problems in existence today: adware and spyware. The reason they are almost always spoken of together is because, in the real world, they so often operate in tandem. Rarely will you discover one infection without the other. The reason is that originally spyware was used mainly to provide ‘market profile’ data to adware owners.
Mike Alexander
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Symptoms

Image by Colin ZHU via Flickr

We are all familiar with spies and covert operations that exist in wartime or in politically tense regions. Now however, you can find spies and covert procedures taking over your own computer system as you use it to access the Internet.

Have you noticed a suspicious slowing down of your computer’s processing power without any particular reason? Are you sometimes bombarded with unsolicited pop-up ads that indiscriminately appear whether you are running a program or not? These are the symptoms to look out for and they may continue to happen despite checking your system, running your recently updated anti-virus program and/or running a diagnostics program on your computer. Unless you have a very efficient program to deal with it, you may not even be able to detect that the real problem in your system is the presence of adware and/or spyware.

Adware

Adware is often bundled with freeware or shareware and is unsolicited software that displays advertisements. Yes, sometimes things that seem to be too good to be true turn out to have unwanted invisible strings attached. Adware companies sometimes pay freeware or shareware creators to be able to access their programs and then prey on the unsuspecting individuals who download these programs. Adware causes unsolicited pop up advertisements to appear on your computer and, in severe cases, can cause them to pop up soon as you boot your system.

Spyware

The term ‘spyware’, on the other hand, refers to something more covert and usually undetected in your system until you run an anti-spyware program. Spyware is used exactly as its name implies; to spy on you. In relatively mild cases, it is used to track your Internet browsing habits so that it can report your preferences to a central database and build a marketing profile. What this means is that as you go about your normal Internet business, you are unwittingly under surveillance and your basic right to privacy is being impinged upon.

Malware Overview

What’s worse though, is that this malware (the term for virtually any kind of malevolent software) can take note of your keystrokes or take note of your credit card number or take note of other vital information on your PC that can be used to steal your identity or generally put your security at risk.

A recent study indicated that as many as nine out every ten computers are, or have been, infected with spyware or adware at some time. To make sure that you are not one of statistical majority, you need run an adware and spyware cleaner to detect unwanted security and privacy breaches within your system.

Remedies

Luckily, adware and spyware removal software is readily available and most will completely remove these unwanted programs from your computer. You must note however, that some adware and spyware programs are so intricately bundled within their parent programs that cleaning them out from your computer will disable the so-called ‘legitimate’ programs they infect. This consequence is nevertheless necessary to clean your computer of unwanted malware. You should choose a cleaner that can also work proactively also to prevent future installation of these types of nuisance.

Software for fighting adware and spyware works in the same way as anti-virus programs, except that they target adware and spyware. Considering the trouble that malware creators take to ensure that extracting installed adware and spyware from your computer system will be difficult, the adage about an ounce of prevention being worth more than a pound of cure applies in this situation. Be sure to install a reliable and secure adware and spyware cleaner in your system to remove existing security and privacy risks as well as preventing future hassles.

About The Author

The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel Classes in London and all over the UK.

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