What is Spyware and Adware?

[Durinthiam]

Spyware is basically a program that monitors your Internet or computer access in the background, usually without you knowing that it is working and had ever been installed in the first place, spyware often comes with harmless installers so doing rgular checks can help you combat the evil eye. Some spyware may be installed to purely invade your privacy, report your Internet travels to someone else, record passwords and credit card numbers or display pop-ups based on your browsing


Adware is another form of spyware soley to display ads, and popups all the time whilst you are viewing the web.

Always be aware of

* Rogue Desktop icons appear, linking to adult or pornography sites

* High phone bills due to dialers that can call premium rate lines (only applicable to dial-up users)

* Visual C++ Runtime errors in Internet Explorer, causing it to crash

* Longer than normal computer start-up or shut-down times

* A changed Internet Explorer start or search page.

* Anti-virus software or firewalls stop working.

* Computer slow down.

* Toolbars and taskbars appear onscreen or in Internet Explorer that you did not wish installed like myweb

* Pop-up advertisements appear while you are connected to the Internet, either on your desktop and/or in your web browser.

* Redirects (eg. you go to google.com and get gooooooogley.com)


Always back up your data and do regular anti-spyware scans!

 

[a1whs.com]

Well i dont use any spaywares but occassionaly say once in 2 months or something if i do i use Adwares spyware to do scan and clean and than uninstall that software.Best option is to avoid going to chineese sites,crack,warez sort of sites and your pc would be fine unless you hammer it.

 

[Durinthiam]

aye crack sites are notorious for linking spyware/trojans to keygens and cracks, isn't that nice of them

 

[Illuminati]

aye crack sites are notorious for linking spyware/trojans to keygens and cracks, isn't that nice of them

Moreover, most of those sites are infected in the HTML coding, as well - some of them you can attract spyware / viruses just for being on the site.

 

[Stealth]

You're correct. The HTML coding itself has been used as a capsule for launching the payload - in this case a virus or spyware, although it might even be used for something as benign (and annoying) as a background MIDI.

 

[Bryce W]

You're correct. The HTML coding itself has been used as a capsule for launching the payload - in this case a virus or spyware, although it might even be used for something as benign (and annoying) as a background MIDI.

This is correct by typically only effects unpatched machines, such as an unpatched Windows that is using Internet Explorer.

In fact, you can even get infected off legitimate sites. Just recently a spyware company called ErrorGuard got onto the well known online journal site LiveJournal which caused fake windows errors that say you have to buy their product to fix it. It went unnoticed for some time as the ads only targeted users in Australia and all of LiveJournal.com's staff are in America so they never saw them.

So the lesson to be learned is ALWAYS keep your Windows Updates up-to-date and if possible, dont use Internet Explorer as it takes too long for Microsoft to patch these holes.