Spyware
So what's the deal with Spyware? Well, if you have not encountered
Spyware yet, you probably are not on the internet. Spyware is a term
for malicious software that most usually is used for marketing
purposes. Spyware gets installed on your system and "Spys" on you to
see where you are surfing, what you are looking at and in some extreme
cases, records information like your credit card number.
Most of this is done to send that information back to a company who is
creating marketing data from it. From Spying on you they know what you
like, or heck maybe they don't even care that much and they just want
to advertise to you. Most Spyware, doesn't just spy it also tries to
make you look at what the are selling. This is usually in the form of
Pop-Up ads or "Browser Hijackers" which change your home page or rout
the pages you are visiting through them so that they control the
information.
All this spying seems pretty nasty, but frankly the worst part of Spyware
is not the information stealing, but what having 30 of these programs
running does to your computer. It kills it. Spyware in modern times
has been far worse than viruses when it comes to making your computer
stop functioning correctly. To explain why this is let me give you an
example. First off when you do have Spyware you usually don't just
have one, some Spyware allows more Spyware into your system. Take away
all the spying and advertising and Spyware is still a program running
on your computer, just like Microsoft Word or your email reader.
Imagine that when your computer started you opened up 20 copies of
Microsoft Word and then left them running all the time while you did
other things on your computer. those 20 copies of word would be eating
up your system resources, not leaving memory for the programs you want
to run. Ad to that scenario that the programs are not Word and are
doing mean things and monitoring your connection and downloading and
uploading... well you get the picture.
So where does Spyware come from? The internet of course, but it doesn't
just wander on to your system. You put it there! So stop! now is when
I tell you what you are doing wrong, because if you are reading this
you probably are concerned and don't know.
Like I said, Spyware is all about marketing. People are trying to make a
buck off the net. Because they cant "interrupt" your web page like an
Ad on TV does, people tried to advertise with "banners", passive Ads
somewhere on a web page, like a digital billboard. But, people just
ignored those, so companies became more "Pro-Active" the decided to
trick you into installing "Active" marketing software on your machine.
They did this by making deals with WebPages that said something like
for every person that installs this off your site, we give you a
dollar. So some websites trying to make a buck added in Spyware
Plug-ins to their page. These Plug-ins cant install by themselves and
usually ask you something like "In order to view this page properly
you need to install this Active X component Yes/No" DON'T PUSH YES!
Its a trick! Unless its from Microsoft or Macromedia its most likely
Spyware!
The other way you get Spyware is from "Ad supported software" That's
"Free" software like Kazaa, Morpheus and other File sharing programs
that you can download for Free. Just like in the real world Free
should be a red flag word. This software is Free to you because the
Spyware companies pay for your free download. If you like some
software that is free, they most likely have a pay version. You can
buy Kazaa for $30 with no Spyware attached! I did an
experiment once to see how easy it was to completely destroy a
machine with Spyware. It took 5 Minutes and all I did was install
Kazaa and then surf to a less reputable site and click Yes to its
installation prompts. 5 Minutes and the computer was unusable.
So how do they get away with it all? It legal. Unlike Viruses, you agree
to install Spyware. To get rid of it a new cast of programs have
emerged, like Anti-Virus to Viruses, there is now Anti-Spyware
software. Even Microsoft is coming out with their own. But, beware,
some programs claiming to be Spyware removers are really just Spyware
in disguise. If you want to know which utilities to download or buy,
go to my Quick fixes section here. |
