88% of PCs have spyware, CoolWebSearch most prevalent

According to Webroot, 88% of PCs were infected with spyware in Q1 2005, down slightly from 92% in Q4 2004. The average PC revealed 25 infections, about 18 cookies and seven applications such as adware, system monitors, keyloggers or trojan horses. Webroot found that 4294 websites and 89806 web pages carried spyware and potentially could infect PCs. The most aggressive and prevalent threat continued to be Cool Web Search that appeared in 107 variants and was found on 8.2% of PCs. Gator came in second with 2.2%, 180Search and Powerscan followed with 2.0 and 1.8%, respectively.