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Webwatch
April 2005Most computer users are aware of viruses, software that causes nasty things to happen to your computer, but another threat is becoming better known, spyware. This unwanted software does not damage your computer setup in the same way as a virus, but it spys on what you are doing and slows down your machine.
It started in a trivial way, some software writers were keen to know what customers did with their software so they added some code that sent the details back to them. This is an infringement of your privacy and you pay (via your connection charge) for them to gather marketing information . Many people took the view that as long as their machine worked OK, don't worry about spyware. More recent spyware is far more malicious and has become a real nuisance. A typical symptom of spyware infection is a computer that is very slow. Everything works but it takes much longer than previously.
Spyware gets onto your machine by you installing it, usually but doing something that looks quite innocent. Many of the nasty people who write spyware will try to trick you into installing it on your machine. Most software cannot be installed unless you agree so they provide a little prompt to make you agree. This often takes the form of a box that pops up and says something like "Your computer is infected with xxxx, click here to fix it", where xxxx is the name of a virus that has been on the news. Unless you have specific software that provides warnings of attacks on your system, NEVER respond to such a pop-up. Either click the X on the top right hand corner or ALT and F4 key to close the window if the X is missing. If you do have specific software, the warning will clearly be from that software, the authors will want you to know how good it is at protecting you. Clicking OK or Yes on such a box will install software on your machine that spys on what you do, you can expect at the very least, targeted marketing, adverts will pop up relating to what you looked at on the web. At worst, such software will search for when you use a credit card on line and record the card number, your address etc. and may lead to the new crime of identity fraud. Not that identity fraud is only on the internet, you can fall victim to it from using your credit card over the phone as well.
At long last, Microsoft have started to react to the flood of spyware. They describe spyware on their page at http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/spywarewhat.mspx and how to prevent it infecting your machine at http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/spywareprevent.mspx. It is a very good idea to look carefully at what they have to say.
Two organisations provide free anti-spyware software. They are Ad-Aware
from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
or
Spybot Search and Destroy from http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html.
Beware, many spyware writers provide their nasty code wrapped up with
names very similar to "Ad-Aware", so ONLY go to the sites above.
Whilst most attacks are aimed at PCs, Macintosh machines are not safe. Apple have some information on http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/internetcleanup.html.
If you take care, a computer is a safe and very useful tool, if you drop your guard, it can drive you round the bend!
Having said that, most people manage to use their machine quite happily. Mine still works!
Happy surfing.
Howard