Spyware Conspiracy

I have a conspiracy theory when it comes to the development of spyware. There seems to be a lot of money to be made by the people that develop spyware removal software. Could it be these same people that are developing the spyware in the first place?

Having recently graduated college, I am fully aware of what spyware can do to your computer. I will be honest, I was downloading a lot of music at the time so I was putting myself at risk but it was still annoying to have to have your entire computer erased every couple of months.

The first time I got spyware was sophomore year of college, when it was still fairly new to the internet. My computer was so infected that as soon as I booted up the pop-ups would fill the screen and would not allow it to function at all. Needless to say I lost everything that I had saved on the machine.

I thought I would be smart and put a spyware blocker on my computer when I got it back. I bought the software at Best Buy for around fifteen bucks and installed it on my computer. I figured by having that I didn't have to worry about being infected anymore. It only took me about a month to realize that was just foolish.

After the second time I had to have my computer erased I started doing some digging into how I was getting all this spyware. It turns out that spyware can come from almost any source as long as you click on the link to a page. Also, being a college student, I was visiting the sites that are most likely to contain spyware.

Myspace and Facebook are two of the worst sites for contracting spyware. Since users control the content that add to their space they can include spyware any where they want. For example, if you are searching through Myspace and see someone that looks interesting you may click on their page. If you click on one of the links you could easily get spyware on your computer.

I know that web sites do everything they can to block spyware but with new viruses being created everyday there is no way to stop them all. Here is where the money making machine comes into play. My parents recently got spyware on their computer and I noticed that the virus itself recommended what software could be used to get it off.

If you need specific spyware software to clean your computer, who is to say that the person that created that particular virus is not also the one selling the cure. Think of the millions of dollars that could be made if you were the only person that knew how to cure AIDS. You could charge whatever you wanted because everyone would want the cure.

The same idea works with spyware. If you were writing these viruses and selling the specific clean up software, you could rake in a fortune. With the internet becoming more and more interactive it would take no time at all to spread the virus and then reap the benefits for months by people buying the clean up. Once one particular virus became almost obsolete you would only need to write a new virus.

I am not saying that Bill Gates is sitting at home writing spyware but it is interesting to think about where spyware originates from. Maybe the cure is coming from the cause.