A
Consumers Guide To Avoiding Adware, Spyware, Malware, Scumware
I will begin by saying that I personally believe Adware,
Scumware (my favorite term for these lowlife invaders of your computer)
Malware or Spyware, whatever term you want to use, is a bigger threat and
more costly than viruses or spam.
Spyware Effects On Your Computer
One of the reasons these bottom feeding creations
are so costly is that they slow down your computer and tie up CPU
resources. They make your computer manifest symptoms of hardware
problems when really it's caused by ill written program code, slow
servers, and not enough bandwidth. Its bad enough that spyware
redirects your CPU to wasteful activities that you don't want, the cheesy
people are doing this with cheesy servers and are too cheap to buy enough
bandwidth to deliver their scummy content with any speed. If you
computer is doing the following: 1. Running
slow particularly on the internet. 2.
Displaying an excessive number of "pop up" or "pop under" ads.
3. Hanging and showing the hourglass when opening a new
page. 4. Showing hard drive activity
when no demand has been made for a new file (sitting idle and the hard
drive light is on) then there is a good chance your computer has spyware
installed on it. 5. The increased popup
activity shows ads related in content to websites you have recently
visited. i.e. you visit 5 investment related websites and suddenly the
frequency of investment related popup's or popunder's increases.
While this may be as a result of visiting one of the websites in many
cases it is evidence of adware / scumware activity
Avoiding Spyware
This is virtually impossible, at sometime
during the operation of your computer spyware is going to be introduced to
your system. Anti-Adware Programs are available but the sleeze bags that
produce this scumware can pump it out faster than the removal people can
update their software. The best strategy to use against spyware (malware)
is to attempt to minimize the risk of exposure to these programs. You can
use the following tactics and procedures to achieve this:
1. Be very careful when downloading
freeware or demos of software. Many deliverers of scumware or
spyware companies make deals or offer financial incentives to companies
that produce software that allow "freeware" or shareware evaluation of
their software. The spyware is bundled with these free downloads and
when you install what you downloaded you get these miserable "freebies" as
a bonus. 2. Be
suspicious of sites containing "free online gaming", "get rich quick
schemes" and
"download this postcard, cutesy thing, and email it to a friend site".
The latter can be a mother lode for the malware'er since not only do you
infect your machine but you have the potential of infecting everyone in your
address book. 3.
Show care with email. Never open unsolicited emails that contain
attachments and be wary of attachment from friends that contain "novelty
type" programs and features.
4. Be especially careful of popup's and popunder's that
imply that your computer "is or maybe infected with spyware" because 9
times out of 10 if you let these programs do their check your computer
WILL be infected with spyware. Likewise be wary of popup's and
popunder's that optimize your computer. These offers will generally
fulfill their promise, when the "optimization" is complete your computer
will optimally display the popups these popup's load and they will
efficiently record every website you visit so that you will efficiently
receive popup's and popunder's related to these visited websites.
Software To Combat Adware / Spyware / Malware / Scumware
Because of the rapid explosion of this problem there is a plethora of
products geared
toward controlling, preventing and removing Spyware. Be very careful
in investing in this type of software. From my experience the best
product on the market is "Hijack This !" but DO NOT buy this product unless
you have extensive experience with PC operating systems and a thorough
knowledge of Microsoft's Register. For the end user Hijack This ! is
like shaving with a chainsaw ! It basically creates a list of all
registry objects and gives you the opportunity to delete these objects.
If you are not thoroughly versed in the inner workings of Microsoft's
registry I will guarantee you that you will trash your system ! The
two best "end user" programs are Ad-Aware and Spybot "Search and Destroy".
While neither program is 100% effective they will , for the most part, keep
your computer free of scumware / malware.
We have provided a download area where you can download an evaluation
copy of both Spybot and Ad-aware to use. I would encourage you to try
both and if at all possible ,within your budget, purchase both products.
When we had the store we used both and found that if one program did not
remove a particular piece of scumware the other program would.
As a sidenote please remember these are opinions it's like answering the
classic question "Which is better a Ford or a Chevy (Could it be a Buick ?).
I'm sure there are other effective Spyware Removal Tools that I have not
evaluated and I choose not to mention the ineffective one's. It is
also possible that as technology moves forward other programs will come to
the forefront.
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