Avoiding Adware and Spyware

By Gareth Wright of GeekSlash.com's Staff

What are Spyware and Adware

What are Spyware and Adware? What are Spyware and Adware? Adware is software which advertising companies install onto your computer. Adware programs are made to display adverts every so often in the hope that you will click them, and go to view the product which they are advertising. This can be very annoying to you as a computer user and can spoil your computing experience.

Spyware programs are very similar to Adware, but work in a different way. Instead of displaying adverts these programs collect information about you. This information is then sent back to the companies that have infected you with this Spyware. They can use this information in conjunction with Ad companies to display targeted adverts about the things that you commonly use on the internet.

However, Spyware can have a more sinister use. Spyware can be used to collect sensitive information about you. For example Spyware can be used to collect credit card numbers and passwords from the sites that you visit.

Avoiding Adware

One of the best ways to avoid adware and spyware is to use a more secure or lesser known browser, as less spyware will be made for it. Most programmers use FireFox as their browser, one of the reasons is it is considered far more secure than Internet Explorer. A link is available at the end of this article for you to download FireFox.

There are many precautions which you can take to keep yourself Adware-Free. Firstly install a good popup blocker, such as the one included on the Google toolbar. Most of these are free and can stop major pop ups and adverts.

Another step you should take is to avoid clicking on messages that say ‘Click yes to access this site’ and strange windows offering downloads. Only download from sites which can be trusted, such as Microsoft. These downloads may be Spyware. Or they could also be something much worse, such as a Virus. Therefore, this kind of pop-up should be avoided.

These downloads should always include the option to click no. Some websites might show another message saying you must click yes. However, if you keep clicking no, the pop-ups will stop and then you are free to visit the site. However, this is not true on some rare occasions.

Also when you see a pop up which looks like a warning, double check the pop up to ensure that it is actually a genuine warning. Spyware may “fake” a warning, for example a security warning asking you to “Download the latest patch”, to trick you into downloading the spyware.

Avoiding Spyware

One main precaution against Spyware is to install a firewall. These are programs which stop unwanted contact with the internet. This will disallow the Spyware programs to contact the vendors (the companies which install the Spyware on your computer) and therefore will render the Spyware program useless.

Another way of avoiding spyware is to get a program which continually scans for it, for example Microsoft Anti-Spyware.

General Precautions

If you are using Internet explorer 6 you can adjust the browsers security settings. Doing this you can set the preferred level of information you will accept from a website. However adjusting these to higher levels may stop some websites working correctly.

To change the settings left click ‘tools’, then ‘internet options…’. This will bring up the internet options dialog box. From here click the internet ‘security tab’ at the top of the window. Now, at the bottom of this window, there is a scale that will allow you to manually adjust the security settings at the bottom. Doing this, you can set the preferred level of data you will accept from a website, and lowering the scale will increase the amount of data which will be accepted from websites.

A final precaution is to not go on certain websites. Many sites containing adult material, illegal downloads and MP3s have a higher chance of containing Spyware. Therefore, it is recommended that you avoid these sites to reduce the chances of having Spyware installed on your computer.

Read the small print when installing applications. It costs a lot to make programs, for example they have to pay the developer of that program. Therefore they will include ad-ware or spyware in there software so that they can receive money from big companies, and therefore keep that piece of software free. However, there is often no choice in installing these programs. Therefore, if you don’t want these programs installed on your computer, then cancel the installation of the program.

Indications of infection

There are several signatures which could be a sign of infection. Some of these are easy to spot, where as some can be a little tricky. However, no matter how hard they are to detect, there are a few ways to spot an Adware infection.

Some Adware programs change your homepage to a page full of adverts. Your homepage is the web site which your internet program loads up when it is started. Many people have Yahoo!, Google or MSN as their homepage. It is recommended that you set your homepage to one of these, because they are trustworthy websites.

Another indication is if you see an increase of adverts on sites which didn’t have any before. If you have noticed that sites which didn’t have adverts before are showing Adware now, then you might have Adware. To check, go to another website which you're sure doesn't contain adverts, and see if adverts pop up there. If they do, then there is a very good chance that you computer is infected with Adware.

Removal of Spyware and Adware

One important thing to know about Spyware is that the programs are already on your computer before you try and get rid of it. This is because they are made to be hidden from view, so that the people using infected computers do not suspect that the Spyware is actually there. Therefore when you try to remove the spyware from your computer you may discover that there are several pieces of spyware running on your computer, even though you may have not noticed them before.

There are several free tools which you can use to remove Spyware. These are mainly free and are very easy to use. The first tool is Ad-Aware (Lava soft). This is a very easy tool to use and will remove most Adware SE and Spyware. Another good program to use is Spy-Bot search and destroy. This again is very effective at removing Spyware. It is also easy and simple to use. Links for both these can be found at the bottom of this page.

Links:

• Mozilla FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/)
• Spy-Bot search and destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html)
• Ad-Aware SE (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/)

About the author:

Gareth Wright is a staff member of Geek Slash who as well as writing articles produced the css based design.