Spyware
 

 

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What is Spyware & Adware

Whilst the Internet is a powerful resource and provides users with many useful and often entertaining things to see and do, it also has its dark side. Most people are familiar with freeware, shareware, cookies, media players, interactive content, and file sharing.

What they may not realize is that some of the aforementioned may contain code or components that allow the developers of these applications and tools to actually collect and disseminate information about those using them.

They can track your surfing habits, abuse your Internet connection by sending this data to a third party, profile your shopping preferences, hijack your browser start page or pages, alter important system files, and can do this without your knowledge or permission. The security and privacy implications of these exploits should be quite obvious and undesirable on any system or network!

Below is links to the key software that I use personal and professional basis for combating this continual threat

Key Software

  • Ad-Aware
    Ad-Aware is designed to provide advanced protection from known Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components. With the release of Ad-Aware SE Personal edition, Lavasoft takes the fight against Spyware to the next level.

    Ad-Aware can be downloaded by clicking here
     
  • Spybot Seach & Destroy
     

    SpyBot-S&D searches your hard drive for so-called spy- or adbots; little modules that are responsible for the ads many programs display. But many of these modules also transmit information about your surfing behaviour and more to the net.

    If SpyBot-S&D finds such modules, it can remove them - or replace them with empty dummies in case their host software won't run with its bot removed. In most cases, the host still runs fine after removing the bot. For a list of 'supported' bots see the feature lists below. The Spybot-S&D interface is so easy, that updates just require replacing a file of about 80k in size. Those updates are distributed by my software mailinglist, at the authors page and are also available from inside the programs update section.

    Another feature of Spybot S&D is the removal of usage tracks, which makes it more complicated for unknown spybots to transmit useful data. The list of last visited websites, opened files, started programs, cookies, all that and more can be cleaned. Supported are the three major browsers Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator and Opera.

    Last but not least Spybot-S&D contains some routines to find and correct invalid entries into the registry

    Spybot Search and Destroy can be downloaded by clicking here

         

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Last modified: 20-Feb-2010 21:56:32