The Security Mentor

These days (spring 2004) the number 1 cause of strange behavior in home PC's is "spyware", nosy software that gathers information about you and ships it off somewhere, usually to a marketing company. It comes attached to useful utilities. A program to manage your passwords or set your computer's clock may be the bait which hides the hook of spyware. It interferes with your computer by popping up ads, hijacking your Internet searches, or just simply being so poorly written it causes slowdowns and bugs.

Don't take it personally. The reason he threw up his hands and walked away is sheer exasperation. Spyware is all over the place. Some computer people have found and removed thousands of spyware programs from a single computer. That kind of work gets old fast.

Invite your friend back, offer him some beer or some Coke, and ask him to show you that "Linux" thing he keeps talking about. He'll mellow out.

Marketing companies spend millions of dollars to collect personal information about people. Your address and phone number are worth money to junk mailers and telemarketers. That's big money if they have an idea what you're likely to buy.

Because the spyware is making your computer act strange and run slowly. You can't trust the people who tricked you into installing it -- they may be hurting your system's security. The spyware is giving away information that's worth money and could even be embarrassing.

First of all, stop installing spyware.

Don't take candy from strangers.

Install a program that scans for spyware and can remove it. Most antivirus software won't help. Norton Antivirus 2004 does have anti-spyware features. You can save some money by using a free program called Ad-Aware. There are lots of other good anti-spyware programs but some of them are kind of quirky. Whatever you install, update it at least once a week and keep using it to check your system.

# posted by Frederick @ 3:52 PM Email to a friend: