Spyware. Just the sound of the word makes people cringe. But what really is it?
You get on the internet and download a program like Kazaa so that you can download MP3's. Or you download a new, so called 'free' game. All of a sudden, your computer seems slower than it used to be. Also, you are seeing a lot of pop-up windows now when you surf the internet. Maybe the internet just seems slower. These are all symptoms of a spyware infestation.
Spyware is nothing more than software that, with or without your knowledge (Ever read those 'licensing agreements' that you must agree to?) was installed on you computer. It then watches anything it was programmed to and reports back to the company that created it.
I'm not going to name any actual pieces of spyware here, but let say you install a game called 'abc'. When you installed it, programs 'x1', 'x2', and 'x3' were installed in the background without you knowing about it. Program 'x1' is watching where you surf on the internet and reporting that information back to some company over the internet. Meanwhile, program 'x2' is watching what programs you run on your computer and sending that information back to the company that wrote it. Program 'x3' is watching what things you search for on the internet and what you buy and letting another company know about your buying habits.
That, basically, is how spyware works. It is a program that watches you, in some manner, and reports back to the company that designed or purchased it. The people that made the program 'abc' either work for the companies that made 'x1', 'x2', and 'x3' or are being paid for every installation of the spyware they can do.
So, what can you do about it? Either you need to read through every licensing agreement when you install software and don't install the software if it says that you will also be installing and agreeing to be monitored by 'x1', 'x2', and 'x3', or you could fight back.
In order to get rid of spyware that is installed on your machine, I recommend getting Ad-Aware and installing it on your machine. Always install a new copy of this software at least every 3 months. It's a very intelligent program and can remove the older version of itself for you. You can also get SpyBot - Search and Destroy. It's a bit more complicated, but still does a good job of getting rid of spyware. I normally use both programs on my personal machines and on any customer's computer that has trouble.
After you install the software, run it and make sure to update it as well. Then scan your machine for spyware. Just like anti-virus softwarem, it could take an hour to scan your entire machine. After it's complete, make sure to select all of the spyware items it found and then remove them.
Spyware is a menace. I've seen today's fastest computers brought to a slow crawl by 20 pieces of spyware installed. I've seen computers that have over 2000 pieces of spyware installed. It's not a pretty site. Hopefully congress will finally figure out a way to make it illegal to create spyware and get it installed on your machine.