Spyware Scan

There is better than 30% probability that a spyware scan of your PC will reveal one or more spyware infections. Less than 40% of all PC's have any form of spyware blocking software installed.

There is enormous apathy about spyware despite the fact that it represents a major threat to privacy, exposure to identity theft and has an economic cost that has been estimated at more than $100 per infected PC, representing billions of dollars globally.

The two words spyware and deception are inseparable. The authors and distributors of spyware do not want PC owners to know that they have been infected and they have been highly creative in devising ways to infect millions of PC's without the knowledge of users.

Why Run a Spyware Scan?

In addition to installing code and modifying programs, spyware monitors infected PC's and often harvests information from them. Spyware programs have been linked to cases of identity theft and fraud.

Spyware is a major threat to laptop security.

The motivations behind publishing and infecting PC's with spyware include:

• Monitoring the behaviour of PC users.
• Collecting personal information from PC's.
• Modifying software on the PC and in particular web browsers
• Causing internet browsers to override users and re-direct to commercial sites.
• Generating revenue from modified browsing behaviour.

The PC user derives no benefit from spyware. In fact the most noticeable symptom of spyware infection is a sluggish and degraded performance.

Spyware is Malware

What is malware? Spyware and adware are very closely related to viruses. They are malicious by definition. Technically they are not viruses, but only because they cannot reproduce themselves by infecting other PC's. This has not prevented their proliferation on a massive scale because the commercial interests behind them use other highly effective ways to spread infection. In particular these organizations offer free downloads of software, music and videos as bait to induce consumers to download a package that also contains a spyware payload.

Spyware and the Law

Publishers of spyware have been very aggressive in using the legal system to defend their activities and attack the use of the term spyware. At the route of their defense is an argument that PC users are asked to give consent to a download (infection). That apparently happens when the PC user ticks the "Accept" button before a download. "Acceptance" will reference pages of small print that represent full disclosure by these organizations. The small print is designed to be unintelligible to anyone outside the legal profession.

Protection Against Spyware?

1. Never accept a free download from any web site other than a legitimate software company offering upgrades to licensed software. Read the fine print before down loading anything. If the fine print leaves you in any doubt, don't do it.


2. Regularly run a spyware scan.


3. Get one of the top 10 antivirus products, preferably one of the complete internet security suites that includes a spyware scan and blocking facility.


4. Treat spyware as a serious virus infection.


5. Other options: Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy.

There are also many options for the free removal of spyware, but these downloads are themselves often carriers of spyware. Caution!