Have you got SpyWare?

[Brian Turner]

I've recently seen a lot of PCs with scumware installed - training venues and small businesses. It's amazing how deep-seated these programs can be, and even spybot can't always remove them. Seems like people need a small range of powerful programs for the purpose: Spyware S&D, AdAware, and HijackThis.

Anyway, here's an article for the reading:

Lurking "spyware" may be a security weak spot

One in twenty computers with an internet connection may be harbouring unwanted "spyware" programs that can record a user's computer use, generate nuisance pop-up ads and may pose a security risk, suggests a US study.

So-called spyware normally piggybacks on to a computer with other "free" programs, such as some music or file-sharing software. Users may install these additional programs, which remain hidden, without realising, even though they are mentioned somewhere in the terms of agreement that appear on screen during installation.

Spyware may record a user's keystrokes or web browsing activity for market-research purposes. Or it may cause pop-up adverts to appear when a user is browsing the web. Some programs may even alter browser settings to redirect to a particular search engine. Many are difficult to remove without special software tools.

Computer scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle developed software to analyse network traffic and identify chunks of data associated with four known "spyware" programs - Gator, Cydoor, SaveNow and eZula.

They examined the traffic on the university campus and found that 5.1 per cent of all connected machines had one of these four programs running. And, within the university, 69 per cent of all departments and offices contained at least one computer running the programs. The team examined a total of 31,303 computers connected to the network.


More: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994745

[becki]

I hope I haven't got any installed! how will i know?

[Gabriel]

Originally Posted by becki

I hope I haven't got any installed! how will i know?

You usually know when you have spyware installed becki. Your computer because very slow while doing the simplest things, common pages such as search engines and 404s are redirected to an affiliated page, and words on webpages are suddenly highlighted to match affiliate links in the adware itself. Computers are often tetchy at the best of times but when you have spyware running you usually notice something very different is up.