Your Computer Needs Protection from Adware and Spyware

Has you computer been acting stranger than usual lately? About 95% of people that actively surf the net have computers infected with spyware. It's a common problem, a common misery, that needs to be dealt with as soon as you find an infection. What is spyware? Spyware programs come in many different shapes and sizes but all have a couple of things in common. Spyware infects your computer through other downloads, clicks on pop-ups or simply surfing to the wrong website. You won't know when it hits; you'll just see the results later. Spyware can gain access to and send out your personal information to other remote computers without your knowledge or consent, and it's a chore to find and uninstall it. It can be next to impossible to get rid of it by yourself; you'll need the help of a removal program.

Methods of spyware infection:

1. An email, possibly with attachments. They can look innocent enough, but once opened they can invade your computer with downloads of spyware.

2. Websites. You pass a bad website, seemingly innocent, but you've picked up something along the way. Could be a download that looked legit, could be from cookies the site pushes to your computer. Either way, once the program is downloads and installed, your system is infected. Porn sites are notorious for spyware and adware that pushes pop-ups to your computer.

3. Bundled. You think you're downloading your favorite song, but bundled with it is spyware. Peer to peer downloads are also notorious for infection points.

Symptoms of infection:

1. Changed home page. The changing of your browsers default home page is a common occurrence when dealing with spyware.

2. Websites in your favorites. Sometimes strange websites pop up in your favorite lists without your knowledge. If you tried to delete them and they just came back after rebooting your computer, this is good sign of an infection.

3. Slow computer. Spyware installs to you computer and runs from it, taking up a lot of memory space to drive the programs. If your computer is running slower than usual, do some digging to see if you can't find the reason behind it.

4. Pop-up ads. If you suddenly start receiving many more pop-ups than usual, mostly of adult content, you could have a problem. Spyware programs serve advertisements when you are browsing the internet or sometimes just when your connection is on.

The best thing you can do to prevent spyware is to be wary of the sites you're browsing to, what ads you click on, and what you download. It won't be 100% effective, but it can save you hassle later. Also, you should get a reputable spyware remover that can search and destroy the programs that you find so difficult to uninstall.