I've been having lots of fun with my titles. Anyone reading my blog who has a somewhat good deal of knowledge of computers will know what I'm planning to talk about today with little effort.
So today, ladies and gents, we will be talking about spies. No, not Pierce Brosan or Sean Connery. We're talking about spies that secretly get installed on your computer most of the time without your consent or knowledge.
These little spies are known as spy-ware in the tech community. Their job is to sit on your computer and gather information about what web sites you are are viewing. Why would they want to do that? Well, TO SEND YOU POPUPS OF COURSE! Think of spy-ware as real time junk mail senders. If you go and take a look at something that has to do with shoes, spy-ware captures your search terms and browsing information, sends it back to a remote server that catches that information, and then the server tells the spy what pop up to send you. Thus making you incredibly annoyed and slowing down your browser.
Regular spy-ware is pretty much a nuisance. However, there are other types of spies that aren't so nice. Ad-ware is is spy-ware's big brother. Ad-ware doesn't try to hide on your computer. The program gets installed from programs that are ad supported which make them free. There are way too many programs to list that contain some sort of ad program inside of them. My suggestion to anyone who is interested in downloading free software, especially free games, is to make sure you read reviews from other people who have downloaded the program before. Sometimes third party software, such as tool bars for your Internet browser, contain ad-ware and you would not know it until you suddenly see the signs.
So now that you know that the Internet is out to destroy your computer slowly, how do you go about fixing it? There are several ways to fix and prevent these programs from doing any harm to your machine. One would be to change your Internet browser (for those of you using Internet Explorer) or you can download FREE software to get rid of it. THAT'S RIGHT! THERE'S THAT MAGIC WORD AGAIN! FREE!
We'll talk about browsers in another blog. For now, lets talk about these free pieces of software that you can download. The most famous free software is called Spybot - Search and Destroy. Just the name gives me chills!
Download Spybot - Search and Destroy
The other one doesn't have such a fantastic name, but it's also a great program to use to get rid of spy-ware or ad-ware. This one is also free and is called Ad-Aware.
These programs have their databases of known spy software updated pretty regularly. I would recommend donating to the Spybot people for their wonderful software.
(Remember: Writing script for software isn't exactly easy. If you can spare at least $10 out of your pocket to save you $100 in the long run after your computer breaks, you might as well give it to someone who is providing you something for free to help you.)
The one bonus piece of advice that I will give you now that I've told you about these spy-ware removal items is that you should run them both together. By that I mean, after you run Spybot you should run Ad-Aware also. You're probably thinking that this is a little over kill, but in actuality it isn't. I'll explain it to you in the old saying "Two heads are better than one." Spybot is a great program, but it isn't perfect. The same goes for Ad-Aware. One program might catch something that the other might not and therefore it is best to run both of them to make sure you're catching everything that could be hiding on your computer. It is better to be safe than sorry. After your computer is running fine again, then it will only be necessary to run which ever you want and uninstall the other.
You have your homework. Go ahead and download those programs and clean up!
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