Spyware
FAQ's and Answers
Recently we have seen a dramatic increase in a new form of attack on personal
PC’s. Hackers and scam artists are using a group of tools collectively
known as spyware. You may have heard about them on the evening news. These
programs, once loaded on your pc, will eventually takeover your pc and make it
almost unusable. These programs load by themselves without your knowledge or
consent, and hide from you on your computer. In many cases the only fix for a
badly infected PC is to reformat the computer and reinstall the operating system
which will cause you to lose all your data.
Some answers to frequently
answered questions:
How does spyware affect my computer?
Spyware roots itself deeply into your computer, hiding it's tracks, and then
reports what sites you visit, and how often, so that sites can use pop ups to offer
you products based upon your visitation preferences online, or they can also use
your internet connection to attempt to send itself either to your list of
friends and family, or, it will attempt to download and send itself to a list of
potential addresses online, recreating itself exponentially, also commonly known of
as malware, dependant on what the programmer of the spyware programmed them to do.
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What are the symptoms?
Your pc may become extremely slow, or your home page for your browser may be
changed to a different home page than your used to, and will be hard to change back
from the newly aquired one. You may also find it next to impossible to surf the net.
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How did spyware get on my pc?
In alot of cases, it comes in via email, however, the newest form, and most
dangerous, can now come in just by visiting a web site that will automatically
download and install the spyware on your system without your permission.
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How do I know which websites to avoid?
Unfortunately, you can't know for sure. While working on past infected pc's,
we have noticed that most infections have come from free music, porn, and gambling
sites. Most legitimate sites are ok, however, you should try to avoid sites that
offer "free" stuff, especially sites offering popup blockers, spyware stoppers,
internet accelerators, spam filters or that your computer could have a virus orsda
spyware on it, and to click to scan your system now.
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Why should I avoid sites with anti-spyware software, isn't that what I want?
It has recently been discovered, that some of the most fatal spywares are coming
from the publishers of the free anti-spyware programs. If you are looking for a good,
solid anti-spyware program, buy it from a reputable company.
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I have anti-virus protection, isn't that enough?
As of this date, there is no anti-virus software adequate enough to
cover both virus and spyware, as spyware is even harder to detect than
viruses.
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If my PC gets infected and I don't know how to fix it, what can I do?
Please read this article , it is one of the best articles I have seen online dealing with viruses, malware and grayware. Or you can still call our tech support number at 636-9011, if your infection is minor, we may be able to help you over the phone. If your PC is badly infected, you may need more help than we can offer for free.
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What can I do to prevent this problem?
Unfortunately, there are not many ways to prevent this, some of the software
companies have introduced newer ways to combat spyware, there is
www.symantec.com for Norton's
anti-virus and spyware programs, there is also
www.mcafee.com for McAfee's anti-virus and
spyware programs, however, we use a free version for both anti-virus and spyware
from free.grisoft.com and have had no problems with
the usage of those programs. If you have Windows XP, and have not already installed
Service Pack 2, it can be downloaded from Microsoft by clicking on this link:
Microsoft Service pack.
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What if I don't care about spyware tracking where I visit?
While about 50% of the common spyware files will do your system no major harm, it
is the way the programmers of the spyware make the files, that do the most harm to your
computer system. The programmers do not care if their program is streamline or not,
so they don't fix the code of their files to be memory usage oriented. If you only had
a few spyware files on your system, it's likely you'd be fine, however, upon further
investigation of PC's that have been attacked by spyware, we normally find between 400 to
600 or more pieces of spyware. That means that at any given time, based upon how they were
programmed, you could have that many or more trying to run at the same time, which are poorly
written and could potentially cause corruption of your operating system as well.
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Is there any way to stop spyware from getting on my PC?
While big strides are being made by all the companies that have anti-virus and spyware
products available, as of this date, there is no current program that is all inclusive or
able to block this stuff from getting to your system. They are good at removing them once
on your system, but, so far, I have yet to see any of them able to outright block them.
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What preventative measures should I take?
We recommend that you download one of the spyware removal tools, even Windows has
a version, called defender, available, and run it Regularly go to the Microsoft Update site and update your PC. Make sure
you have a current version of any anti-virus and spyware programs you choose, and use them
daily. Most importantly, back up your data once every week, that way, if you do get a bad
infection and have to reformat your hard drive, thereby losing all you had, you can restore
the data you backed up and be back in business.
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Tips to help prevent spyware/malware.
One of the best ways is to ensure you keep Windows programs completely up to date by
using Microsoft's Update Service. You should also keep your major programs that interact
with Microsoft or are used on a daily basis, up to date, such as: Sun Java, Flash plug-ins,
Media players, Firefox, etc.
Never, under any circumstances, should you open an email attachment from untrusted
sources, regardless of how tempting they sound or appear. Never click on an unknown link
inside of that email either.
Unless you are 100% certain a file is clean, never install any programs you have downloaded
or gotten from a friend on any removable media. A good firewall is essential in helping to
prevent worms and the like from secretly entering your PC. (Ex. Zonealarm Pro, Windows Firewall,
Jetico, etc.).
Unfortunately, sticking to these essential rules of thumb for internet travelling/operation
is not easy. However, since these days you can get infected by simply going to a hostile web
site or opening a contaminated file, you need more protection than basic services can provide.
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