"Spyware" Watching You

-Imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from a sfriend who told me he'd been the victim of a "spyware" sattack that left him shaking at his loss of privacy. I listened to his horror story with a sympathetic ear, but sI felt secure since I carry anti-virus software and a sfirewall (both by Norton). At his suggestion - and to my surprise - I ran a program scalled "Spy Sweeper" and found a veritable minefield of sdangerous and harmful programs lurking on my computer. "Spyware" is software that gets onto your computer and sliterally "spies" on your activities. The spying can range from relatively harmless use of scookies tracking you across multiple websites... to sextremely dangerous "keystroke loggers" which record spasswords, credit cards, and other personal data. That data sthen gets relayed to the person who put the software on syour computer. Three primary types of spyware exist to complicate your sonline life, including: 1. "cookies" s2. "Adware" s3. Malicious programs like "keystroke loggers" Cookies represent mostly a danger of lost privacy. In theory, someone could use a "cookie" to track you across smultiple sites, combine that data with several databases, sand figure out a lot more information about you than would smake you comfortable. "Adware" tracks more than just your movement across sites, sit spies on your installed software and computer habits to sthen serve up advertising, modify websites before you see sthem, and generally do things without your knowledge with sthe intention of trying to get you to buy things. "Keystroke loggers" and other malicious programs exist for sone purpose: to cause personal mayhem and financial damage. Spyware gets on your computer in one of several different sways. First, it rides along with software you download from the s'Net and install on your system. Second, they come as email attachments (much like viruses) sand automatically install themselves on your computer when syou open the email message. Third, hackers find an open port on your computer and use sthe "back door" to install basically anything they want. And fourth, the more malicious types, like keystroke sloggers, can even get installed by someone with direct sphysical access to your computer such as an employer, ssuspicious spouse, business competitor, or someone who swants to know exactly what you're doing. Now, suppose you carry an up-to-date anti-virus program and sa firewall - shouldn't that represent potent protection? In a word: NO! I can personally attest that even the most up-to-date anti- svirus programs and firewalls will not (repeat, WILL NOT) scatch all the spyware that can infest your computer. You need a program that specifically scans your system for sthe tens-of-thousands of existing spyware programs along swith the new ones appearing daily. Check out "Spy Sweeper" from webroot.com - this is the sprogram I used to discover the spyware on my computer. One thing I noticed, however, is that this program is a smemory hog, so once I scanned, I turned it off and then suse it 2-3 times a week... not the best strategy, but sI want to give you the "whole" picture. I also got the following recommendations from numerous ssubscribers about 2 programs to specifically help identify sand remove spyware from your system (PC): 1. "Ad Aware" from lavasoft.de s2. "Spybot Search & Destroy" from safer-networking.org The overwhelmingly recommended firewall suggested by readers swas Zone Alarm Pro from Zone Labs s=>visit ebookfire website and click zonealarm which have HTML extensionThe bottom line seems pretty simple (but lengthy) if you swant to protect yourself against this growing threat. ~ Keep your anti-virus program current s~ Install a firewall s~ Carefully screen software before installing it s~ Scan for specifically for spyware weekly s~ Stay current on this growing threat.

Thank : Jagdip Singh