Most of us have experienced the destructive nature of Viruses and may have had experience with hackers. There are very few people today do not use an Anti-virus program and many peopel also employ a Firewall. Now there is a new threat called SpyWare / AdWare and its just as nasty as the other two. It is different from Viruses and Hacker related threats and your Anti-Virus / Firewall software does not protect you from it. You need a special software to deal with it! WHAT IS SPYWARE / ADWARE AND WHAT DOES IT DO? SpyWare / AdWare is software that runs on your computer with out your knowledge or permission. The purpose of SpyWare / AdWare is to collect personal information from you and send that back to marketing companies so they can target you with advertising resulting in un-wanted Popups and Spam. Some SpyWare / AdWare will continually reset your home page and add often embarrassing entries in your favourites to sites you have never visited. New icons may also appear on your desk top. Your preferred Search Engine may be redirected to another site which looks the same but returns fake results with its own sponsors at the top of the results. New keyword links can appear on all web pages taking you to their own sponsors. The most malicious SpyWare can target your financial information such as credit card numbers and is able to record your key stokes when you access online banking and other secure services. If that scares you IT SHOULD! HOW DOES IT GET THERE? It can be loaded as part of some apparently useful FREE utility or program. It can be loaded when you click on an object on a web page. It can be loaded when you open an e-mail It can be loaded when you down load using P2P sharing systems like Kazza It can be loaded via security holes in system ( See Firewalls and Security )
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU HAVE IT? Your browser hijacked Your home page has been reset Search Engine results seem very strange Increase ins Spam emails Popups being displayed (not just while on the net) Your system is getting slower and slower! New items on the desktop and in favorites New toolbars added to your browser
Basically if you see any new Software, desktop Icons, entries in your Favorites or other changes that you did not put there then chances are you have active SpyWare / Adware on your system.
If you are not using SpyWare / AdWare protection then your system is really vulnerable Everyone now needs an active monitor on their system protecting them from the threat of SpyWare / Adware. It is no longer enough to simply scan for these programs once or twice a month. We recommend NoSpyX Spyware/Adware Protection Suite from InterESOFT. - Find out more / Download Now
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