| Question:
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What is Spyware? |
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| Answer: |
"Spyware is a technology that assists in
gathering information about a
person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, 'spyware'
is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather
information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested
parties.' As such, spyware is cause for public concern about privacy
on the Internet." (I found the above definition on the NetLingo web site:
www.netlingo.com)
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| Question: |
How does spyware hurt me? |
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| Answer: |
The scoundrels, scallywags, and slime-balls
that sneak spyware into our
computers, use it to track our movements on the web and other places and
then sell our e-mail address to companies that offer similar services. This
is one of the reasons we get so much 'spam' in our e-mail. (Spam is
unsolicited commercial e-mail.)
For example, if we visit web sites featuring electronic equipment,
fishing tackle, vacations, etc., then companies offering these products are
sold our e-mail address and start sending us e-mail about their
products and services. And to get back the money they spent to get our
e-mail address those companies, in turn, sell our address to other companies so we get more and more "spam".
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| Question: |
Is there anything I can do about spyware? |
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| Answer: |
Yes there is! We recommend 2 programs
to protect against and delete spyware, both of which are FREE. They are 'Spybot - Search & Destroy' version 1.4 and
'AdAware SE Personal Edition" version 1.06.
Both of these programs can be downloaded from
www.download.com.
Usually
they are both in the 10 most popular downloads. If not, just type the
program name in the search field and tap 'enter'.
Download these programs
to your desktop and then install. These programs do not update and run
automatically. They must be run manually. To run each program you need to update the
anti-spyware database first, then run the spyware scan. I suggest
updating and running each program once a week.
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| Question: |
What about Windows Defender - Beta 2? |
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| Answer: |
Microsoft has released to 'public beta'
(means we can all download and try it) this
Anti-Spyware program. Beta software is not perfect and is not for the faint of
heart. The latest information we have is that it will come out of beta in June, 2006.
This program updates automatically (when you are on the Internet) and
runs automatically on a schedule we set up, for expample, every night at
3:00 AM. Also, Windows Defender (Beta 2) 'runs resident'. This means it
is always working in the background, like a virus scanner.
If you
are willing to chance using a beta product from Microsoft, it can be downloaded
from
www.microsoft.com.
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