Web Stuff and Whatnot

Now that you have an idea of what spyware is, and how it gets on your computer, we can talk about how to get rid of it, and how to find it on your computer. I’ll talk about some tools that can be used to scan your system for the existence of spyware, and hopefully remove it completely.

The first tool I’ll recommend is Spybot Search and Destroy. The best thing about Spybot is that it’s free. They do give you the option to donate some funds, which you should think about once you get it running and see how effective it is. Spybot is quick to download and easy to use. Once you’ve downloaded and installed it you should check for updates and run a scan right away. After that, I would recommend scanning your system at least once a week, and after you install any new software. Be sure to check for updates regularly as well.

Next up is Ad-Aware by Lavasoft. Don’t be confused by the name, Ad-Aware isn’t focused only on adware. Ad-Aware will remove many types of spyware, adware, or other malicious programs. I would say Ad-Aware is a bit more robust than Spybot, but it seems that you really need both of them to be sure you’re finding as many nasty programs as possible. As mentioned before for Spybot, you should run Ad-Aware at least weekly, and after installing new software on your system. I use the professional version (sells for about $50), but the free personal edition is robust enough for most users.

Finally, I was going to review Microsoft’s new AntiSpyware tool, but gave up on downloading it when I had to click several buttons to get through the “Validate your copy of Windows” screens. After going through several new pages, I was prompted with yet another button that said, “Click here so we can scan your system and decide if we think we should let you use the software you paid for”. Okay, I paraphrased that a bit, but it seems that Microsoft’s attitude is that we’re all software thieves who should not be trusted. Now if they had just thought ahead and actually included some spyware software to begin with we wouldn’t have to waste our time trying to download it from them. Coming from Microsoft, I wouldn’t have expected it to work very well anyway, so for now I would recommend sticking with Spybot and Ad-Aware. I guess I didn’t realize how little I trust Microsoft until now (kind of like Wal-Mart and McDonalds). Oops! Don’t want to get off topic!