What Is Spyware And Reasons to Stop It?
How would you feel if online actions performed on your PC are being secretly captured and reported to someone? You are being secretly spied via your online computer connected to the Internet and detailed reports on which websites you visit, your personal information and even what you type as your username/password while accessing various online services such as Internet banking are sent to unknown parties.
Sounds scary? Well, that is what exactly happens when your computer is infected by spyware (spy+ware means spy material or spy software). As the name suggests spyware is programmed to spy on your actions while you are online. “Spyware is a computer program that gets installed on computers without users' knowledge and then collects information about users’ activities and sends it to either hacker, advertising companies or other parties who have managed to place the spyware on your computer”.
As you can imagine now, spyware is very dangerous for any online PC. Nobody would like to be spied – not me, not you and in fact no one else who is sensible enough to evaluate and analyze what damages hidden spyware can potentially cause. Spyware steals the privacy of the user on whose computer it secretly resides. Spyware is unethical and uses computer resources to send information back to the third party who installed it.
Usually spyware - a malicious software, is used for advertising purposes by sending user’s (whose PC is spyware infected) surfing habits to the spyware author. Once the spyware installer has sufficient information of spyware infected PC user surfing trends, he/she will use it directly for serving ads relevant to the user taste or will sell the user’s surfing logs to someone else.
A spyware is secretly installed and is in the form of an executable file (that can be run on PC) and thus it can easily do a lot of damage on the infected PC. Spyware can change the infected PC browser home page, read files on computer storage devices, read cookies file (having name value pairs of sites visited) and install other spyware programs etc. Absolutely Dangerous!
From the above explanations, it’s crystal clear that spyware is disastrous if it is installed on your PC. You need to stop spyware on your computer right now. There is no other way out but to fight it and be better equipped so that spyware never comes in ours PC’s.
In next post, I will cover how spyware usually gets installed on your PC and the common but very effective precautions you can take to stop spyware from entering into your PC.
Let me know if this article was of use to you 
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 and is filed under Why You Must Stop Spyware.You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments Feed. You can Leave A Comment, or A Trackback.
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July 6th, 2010 10:47
I use Internet for mainly online purchases and would be interested and be glad if someone display advertisements of my interest on my PC. I also use a software that spies on my kids Internet surfing habits and gives me report. So for me, spyware is good unless it steals my internet banking password.
Also I would like to know how can I be sure if the advertisement I am clicking on will lead me to safe place. For example, is the advertisement displayed on this page safe? Just curious as it asks me to download something
)
SF
July 8th, 2010 00:16
@Scott: It would be better if you don't keep any spyware on your PC for the reason it serve ads matching your interests as it can certainly leak some other information and do other damages also. Instead, search the Net and subscribe to alerts of yours interested stuff directly from the reputed sites - online stores, like Amazon, Ebay etc.
For knowing about a site credibility of not having any malware (harm causing software), use these free tools :
i). McAfee Free SiteAdvisor browser addon/toolbar at: http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/windows.html
(Installs Yahoo toolbar by default, uncheck if you don't want it. It also asks for your default search engine choice out of Yahoo or Google - Keep a watch and then click).
ii). Google Safe Browsing extension automatically embedded in Firefox browsers 2+, more details at: http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/
I use above two tools and they are really useful in making my online surfing more secure from malware.
Regarding children surfing monitoring software, I won't call it spyware in context to my present post as it is installed by you willingly and you know its purpose.
For any new downloads on your PC, I would suggest that you scan them with all your scanning tools, i.e. antivirus, antispyware, antimalware and antikeylogger, before installing them!
Hope it helps. And thanks for your comments.
July 10th, 2010 21:02
The article is nice as it helped me in understanding the basics of spyware and why one should stop spyware immediately on their PC. Looking forward to more posts on spyware.
I subscribed to your newsletter too. Thanks.
July 12th, 2010 04:33
Very nice review, will be sure to check out more!
July 15th, 2010 09:10
Thanks for all this useful information and also I wanted to share something I found recently.
I was looking for a product that blocks all the unwanted ads except those that you are interested. I found such tool at http://bynamite.com and guess it would be very useful. I am just waiting to get this tool certified by Mozilla as I am getting warning while installing it. Wouldn't you think it would be a good tool to block all those annoying ads by Google/Yahoo etc and have a control over what you want to see? To my opinion the companies like Google/Yahoo are comparable to spyware as they do make you to give your information to their advertisers. Just my 2 cents
PS: I do have AdBlock installed but that blocks all the ads so thought this tool would be useful as I am interested in seeing ads of my interest. Please let me know your expert comments.
July 15th, 2010 19:08
@ Scott: Thanks for sharing Bynamite, a tool that lets the user have better control over the ads. I have not checked it as of now but on reading about it, looks interesting. More after checking it.
September 7th, 2010 07:01
Maintain up the great work mate. This weblog publish shows how well you realize and know this subject.