Spyware Removal Tips

What is Spyware?

As I imagine the name would suggest to most people, spyware and is close ‘cousin’, adware are not things that are beneficial to you or to your PC.

In fact, whilst the majority of spyware is not necessarily going to damage or harm your computer operating system in the way that a virus can, for example, nevertheless, spyware can constitute a major threat to you and your computer.

Basically, spyware and adware are hidden programs that are downloaded and installed onto your PC without you being aware of it from a website that you have visited.  In the case of an adware program, this will then show you advertising materials when you least expect it, and thus disrupt, whatever it was that you were previously doing.

Adware, whilst it is annoying, is nevertheless relatively harmless in the majority of cases.

Spyware, on the other hand, is more often than not anything but harmless.  The idea behind it is that it will ‘spy’ on your computer-based activities and then pass that information back to the person who planted the software on your machine via the internet.

In some cases, the information being passed about to your activities is relatively undamaging.  For example, many websites will place ‘tracking cookies’ on your machine so that they can log your internet activities to gather the information they want about what you do.

Far more seriously, however, some spyware programs do have the ability to log your most personal and private internet activities.

If, for example, you use a credit card to make an online payment, then a sophisticated spyware program could potentially steal this information from you and pass it on to a cyber criminal, who could then fraudulently spend thousands of dollars using your card.

Similarly, if you use the internet to access your bank account, then these details could also be stolen and your bank account emptied out overnight.

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How to recognize a spyware problem

The first and most worrying thing to understand is that, as spyware programs become ever more sophisticated, they are increasingly leaving less recognizable ‘footprints’ on your PC.

In other words, it is becoming ever more difficult to recognize that you might have spyware on your machine from identifiable ‘faults’ that occur during normal PC usage.

It is also a fact that spyware removal techniques that worked even just a few months ago are not necessarily so effective now.  Add this to the fact that it is estimated that 95% of the world’s PCs are infected with spyware, and that many of the latest spyware programs are more advanced and complex than viruses, and you obviously have a major problem.

The most likely cause of spyware is that you have visited an infected internet website, although it is possible (but less likely) that you have got the software from an infected e-mail message (especially if it was an HTML e-mail that you opened).

Despite the increasing complexity of today’s spyware programs, there are still some ‘tell-tale’ signs that you can look out for.

If, for example, your internet homepage which opens when you first access your internet browser suddenly changes, then this is often an indication that you have an adware infection and more often than not, spyware will be attached to this first malware program.

If your machine begins to run incredibly slowly, particularly when you are online, then again, this may indicate that there is some malicious software running in the background and spying on your activities.  Be particularly cautious, if you are doing anything involved with money and suspect that this might be happening to you.

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What to do about spyware

The first thing to say about spyware is that there are hundreds of anti-spyware software packages on the market, some of which are free and others that are commercially available.

In my experience, the free programs that are available are relatively effective at tracing older spyware programs, but they are simply not up to date or powerful enough to combat the latest wave of ‘high-tech’ spyware programs.

And, of course, as it is the more complex latest spyware models that are the most dangerous (they are most likely to be the ones that steal your financial details, for example) then these are the programs that you really need to combat.

Again, from my own experience I would say that in these circumstances, you need to invest in a commercially marketed program below, which is one of the most effective anti-spyware programs I have come across.

Whilst I do not claim to have tried every commercially available program, I have generally found that the tool below is amongst the most regularly updated and responsive programs on the market, and this instills far greater confidence in me that it will be capable of finding and neutralizing the latest generation of ‘smart’ spyware programs, hence my recommendation of it.