Make the Evil Spies Leave- for Free!

Have you ever felt like you were being watched? Most likely you're right. There are spies watching your every move...studying your habits...finding out what pushes your buttons. Or is that what buttons you'll push? That's right. They don't care about you. They are like evil robots- designed to download onto your computer in the background and figure out your online habits. They use this valuable information to help others harass you with more offers for more junk.

So, now to see what is actually on your computer. Buying Anti-Spyware programs can be costly. Luckily there are a few good programs out there that will give you peace of mind for FREE.

Ad-Aware is a free program offered by Lavasoft. It works well on Windows 2000, XP and Vista. It is probably the most popular free anti-spyware program available for good reason. It is user friendly, has plenty of tools and upgrades for a reasonable price if you want better features.

Spybot Search and Destroy is a product offered at no cost by the folks at Safer Networking. Donations are appreciated though. It is for Windows and is also Vista Compatible.

If you have downloaded the previous two, you are well on your way to being protected. However there is still a devious program waiting to get you.

Trend Micro's CWShredder is a tool designed to thwart a specific piece of spyware called CoolWebSearch. This program hijacks your browser, installs bookmarks, changes your homepage and can make Windows crash. Installs for Windows 2000 or later. It is not yet listed for Vista.

Do you worry about getting spyware sent to you by email? It does happen, often through the graphic files in the emails themselves. While some of the above programs offer email scanning Outlook users have an extra line of defense available to them.

NoSpyMail by Belshe Software is a plug-in created to work with Outlook. It is designed to stop spyware laden mail that has slipped through your anti-virus software. This program was not updated to work with Outlook Express.

Windows Defender, just as it sounds is by Microsoft, made for Windows. It is not as great overall as the others but it has some better tools to play with.

These programs do great clean-up on your already compromised system and will block some incoming spyware. However, stopping them from downloading onto your computer will involve a good anti-virus program.