If you are reading this article and you are on a Windows PC, chances are that your computer is or has been infected with Adware or Spyware at some point. Even if you are technically literate and you have all the prevention software such as Ad-Aware and Spybot for the Adware and Spyware. Norton/McAfee/VET for a virus killer and a physical or software firewall, you are still likely to get infected at some point.

So how do they slip by all your protection software and infect peoples systems? Quite simply, they let them in.
Chances are that it was though free software you downloaded at some point.

I am going to look at some free software that I frequently find on clients computers with Adware and Spyware problems.

First off, Messenger Plus!
Messenger Plus! Is an addon that provides extra features for the popular chat program MSN Messenger. I personally encountered this adware in this software on my own system a few years back.
I begin by downloading the program from http://www.msgplus.net/ and started the setup. Here is the first installation screen.

So far so good. Everything is as you would expect it to be, I chose English as the language and clicked Next.

Here is the second installation screen. I looked at the installation path and it was fine, scanned over the text, chose to install the program and was just about to click Next.

But Wait! If you read carefully it asks to install the Sponsor Program. On a passing glance people will read this as “Yes, I want to install Messenger Plus” rather than “Yes, Install the sponsor program”.

If you choose to install the Sponsor Program and click Next, Messenger Plus will be installed onto your system along with the Sponsor Program and you would have been infected with the Adware called “Bundleware.Messenger Plus”.