Spyware and What it Does to Your Computer

An insidious threat to your computer, spyware can be hard to detect and even harder to remove. Spyware can manifest in limitless and annoying ways. An infected computer may suddenly be inundated with popups and other invasive messages. Browser home pages may change, directing instead to a spam website of some sort. In some instances, you may notice some sort of toolbar has appeared attached to your browser. Spyware often claims to be a useful utility, when in fact all it does is clutter up your computer and slow everything down. Spyware often collects sensitive information and violates the privacy of computer users.

Spyware authors often seek to make money with their pernicious creations by shoving advertisements on the user, whether they want to see them or not. If your browser suddenly opens up scads of windows, you very like have some spyware. Even worse, these advertisements can often be pornographic in nature, and these windows can pop up at any time. Spyware programs also often seek to alter the data that passes between the browser and server. As a result of this, spyware can change search engine results and redirect advertising results. Short of finding and removing the spyware, you have no control over this behavior.


How Did it Become Installed on My Computer?


Spyware can come in many forms and guises, and some even masquerade as security software. Be wary of any program that claims to "accelerate" your browsing experience or otherwise enhance it through any kind of "toolbar" type program. Avoid interacting with any advertising that appears in a form that imitates a Windows system message. Most commonly, this message will warn of infections being detected, and then prompt the user to download some kind of freeware.

Webpages can even be infected with spyware. A perfectly normal-looking website page may invisibly drop a piece of spyware onto your system without you knowing it. Some statistics say that 1 in 1000 websites on the web are infected with spyware or virus programs. Often the website owner may not even know it, especially if hackers silently broke into that person's website account and altered the page.

Spyware can also sneak in on the back of another program, such as some popular file sharing applications. When Spyware installs ./image-files/itself undetected on your system, it can then "phone home", recording everything from your browsing habits to what you type on your keyboard - a huge security risk if you type your login and password into your bank account! Some Spyware programs can even disable security on a system, going as far as to disrupt anti-virus programs and change browser security settings without your knowledge. This can spell trouble down the road, from monitoring your online activities to identity theft to capturing your credit card information to cleaning out your bank a to capturing your credit card information to cleaning out your bank account.


Protecting Yourself From Spyware


A couple of proactive measures can help keep your computer clean and spyware free. First of all, consider using a browser other than Internet Explorer. Spyware writers target Internet Explorer because of its large user base, security vulnerabilities, and close operating relationship with the Windows system. By making the switch to an alternative browser, such as Firefox or Opera, the risk of contracting spyware can be greatly reduced. By the same token, other operating systems such as the Mac and Linux tend to be more secure.

Security software such as Ad Aware can be very effective at catching and eliminating spyware. Be careful when downloading security software, however, as there are a great deal of fake programs out there that will only add more spyware to your system even as they claim to remove it. "Real" free programs that combat spyware include AVG (which is bundled with an antivirus program as well), Ad Ware and Spybot Search & Destroy.

Backup your system often. Windows has an effective backup system, but there's a lot of sources to safely store your data, and rollback to a previous, spyware-free version, if neccessary. Finally, if your system is crippled beyond repair, you may need to have a computer technicans clean out your system, attempt to recover data you may have lost, and install protective anti-virus and anti-spyware programs to keep you safe and running in the future.

Source: Credit Identity Safe, a guide to identity theft, scams and reviews of the best identity theft solutions.