Hi. I'm Wayne Cunningham, the senior editor with CNETDownload.com. Today, I'm going to tell you a little bit about spyware.
Spyware vendors push ads from the Internet to your computer,turning it effectively into a billboard. How do they get this spyware on yourcomputer? This happens in various fashions. One way is the drive way. When youare browsing the Web, you go to a Web page. It may have an ActiveX controlinstalled in it. That ActiveX control in turn downloads an EXE file. EXE fileis the actual spyware, which will pull the ads to your computer. Spyware getsits hooks deep into your computer, getting into your registry file, gettinginto folders and even getting into your Windows system folder. The worstspyware actually can reinstall itself once you try to remove it and evendisable your spyware remover.
Now it's important always to have a good spyware removerwith the spyware threats out there. Good choices are Ad-Aware and SpywareDoctor. You can also prevent the ActiveX controls from getting onto yourcomputer by using Firefox instead of IE. Of course, if your computer gets badlyinfected, sometimes all you can do is wipe out your entire system and start outall over again.
