What is SpyWare?
SpyWare are evil programs that hide on your computer and do a number of harmful and annoying things without your knowledge.
SpyWare programs are known to steal information from your computer such as credit card numbers, email addresses, addresses, surfing habits, and more.
What is AdWare?
AdWare is very similar to SpyWare but its only purpose is to advertise. AdWare will PopUp web browser ads very frequently, change banners on websites, change your Google and Yahoo search results with advertisments instead of your true results and place Windows icon advertisments on your Windows desktop, Windows Start Menu, and in your web browser Favorites and Bookmarks.
How did my computer get SpyWare/AdWare?
There are three main ways SpyWare get on your computer:
· Free programs you downloaded are bundled with SpyWare in the install. This is common in the P2P file-sharing arena. Kazaa, iMesh, Grokster, and so on practice this method.
· Many SpyWare parasites load using Internet Explorer's ActiveX installation option. This allows evil websites to automatically install SpyWare on your machine the moment you visit their website without your knowledge
· By exploiting bugs in Internet Explorer and Windows some evil websites load dozens of SpyWare parasites on your machine without your knowledge