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Fearing of Someone Watching You Constantly – Why?

With the advent of computers and internet, internet threats have also increased simultaneously. One of the most rapidly growing internet threats is the spyware. A survey conducted by the National Cyber Security Alliance reveals that almost 90% of the systems are affected by these spyware. Spyware are malicious programs that inconspicuously get into the system by bypassing all the firewalls and anti-virus software that are installed in the system for its safety. As soon as they get into the system, they mess up the system and cause mayhem. However, some good news is that these spyware do not replicate themselves like viruses and worms.

From where do these spyware gets originated? They originate in three different ways. First way of instigating in a system happens when the user himself installs it. Wondering, why would a user install it? Truly speaking, it gets installed without the knowledge of the user. When a user downloads and installs a program, these spyware too gets installed secretly. Be cautious about P2P file-sharing programs as they tarnish the system by possessing spyware programs.

In general, nobody of us read the licensing agreement when downloading a program. Am I right? If you read them carefully, you may notice that certain software publishers would have given a warning saying a spyware program too will be installed in your system along with the program. However, certain agreements provide a special “opt-out” box, which the user can check to stop the installation of the spyware. Therefore, from now on, ensure that you read the licensing agreement thoroughly before installing any program.

Let us look at the next method of spyware installation. This can be done by tricking you. Tricking, how? Certain people would have designed the Internet Explorer browser in such a way that unwanted downloads are not getting downloaded in the system. When you visit a website, you may get a warning stating that due to security reasons, you cannot download a certain program. In such cases, you normally tend to modify the security settings and that’s it…spyware gets installed in the system. Similarly, on some occasions, you might receive a pop-up message stating you can optimize your internet access and will give you two options, which will be, yes and no. Irrespective of whether you choose yes or no, spyware gets installed in your system as they are designed in such a way.

The final or the last way through which spyware gets installed is through the security holes in your web browser or any other software.

What these spyware programs can do to your system? They can do the following:

a)Keep an eye on your keystrokes and can report them
b)Examine your files
c)Sneak through the desktop applications
d)Numerous other spyware programs can be installed in your system
e)Monitor your cookies
f)Hack personal information like login/password, credit card numbers, etc.
g)Default settings of your homepage can be altered
h)Transforming themselves into the next generation of spyware and thereby complex to remove them
i)System may run slow
j)Too many pop-ups can be flashed
k)Adding of affiliate or advertising links to web pages and thereby the spyware programmer gets paid
l)No uninstall option provided and therefore hard to remove them.

Few of the most commonly seen spyware programs are provided below:

CoolWebSearch: These spyware programs gets installed through “holes” that are found in the web browser. What these programs do is they direct traffic to advertisements, in the form of pop-up ads, which include coolwebsearch.com. They even change the DNS settings to lookup pre-selected websites.

Internet Optimizer: They are also called as DyFuCa. When you receive error messages on your web browser, these spyware programs redirect you to advertisements. Similarly, if you try to follow a broken link or you have entered an incorrect URL, you may be redirected to a web page that is full of advertisement pop-ups.

180Soultions: You might be a person who visits cosmetics website often. This information would be recorded and be sent to advertisers. This way this particular company earns unearned profits.

HuntBar: This is also called as WinTools or AdwareWebsearch. They get installed by ActiveX. Almost all of these programs will add toolbars to your web browser and tracks information about the websites you visit and thereby displaying the related advertisements.

Preventing spyware:

Are you worried that it is impossible to prevent these spyware programs? You definitely can prevent spyware. First and foremost thing you will need to do is to install a trustworthy commercial anti-spyware program. Some of them include Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware or Windows Antispyware. Similarly, when you install any anti-virus software, options to install anti-spyware is included in the package. Such anti-virus software companies are Sophos, Symantec and McAfee. Updating your anti-virus software regularly is a must to avoid spyware.

From reading this article, you would have understood that the major culprit in installing spyware programs is the Internet Explorer. Due to this fact, many have changed to non-IE browsers. However, if you are comfortable using Internet Explorer, ensure that you update the security patches regularly and at the same time download programs only from websites that are highly regarded or trustworthy.

However, if you came to know that there are a lot of spyware programs in your system, the only and the best solution would be reinstall the operating system after backing up the necessary data.

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