Spyware is the most likely cause. Spyware originated with a program that has been in the news quite a bit recently. Kazaa Media Desktop was one of the first widely used applications that installed spyware. As other companies viewed the success of spyware and the money it made the distributors of Kazaa, they decided to join the bandwagon. Now spyware proliferates on the internet, and it can be placed on your PC without your knowledge.
Viruses have gained consumer awareness because of marketing by antivirus companies and by the media reporting on mass attacks such as Melissa and Lovebug. Unfortunately, PC users are not as aware of spyware, which is more pervasive and potentially more damaging than viruses are. Most consumers know what viruses are and what some of their symptoms can be. The very same that are aware of viruses are not at all informed about spyware. In order to define these programs we will examine what spyware is, what it does, where it comes from, and what can be done to get rid of it.
Spyware is a program that is installed on your computer either without your consent or with an ambiguous mention in the End User License Agreement of a program. These programs run in the background of a customer’s PC, most often without their knowledge. These tiny processes track the websites you visit. They will track what is viewed by a user and log the information. Companies can purchase this information from the spyware vendor or retain the information for them in order to sell at a later date. These companies also write applications that will sell the processing power of your computer to a company to use at their discretion. A consumer’s PC becomes an extension of a company’s computer devices. It becomes a remote PC for another user somewhere in the world.
Spyware comes from a number of different places. Different web sites visited will often install various versions of spyware. Applications may be as simple as a tracker to something more complex that can alter home pages and registry settings. The most prevalent distributor of spyware around is Peer 2 Peer applications. The same people that enable someone to distribute music, movies, and software also install these malicious applications on your computer.
The destructive actions of spyware are numerous and can be very expensive for a customer to repair. The most obvious extension of spyware on a PC are pop ups. The multiple Windows that appear every time you log on to the internet are caused by spyware. These programs also run in the background on your PC. By doing so, they consume system resources such as memory and processing time. Whenever these resources are taken up your computer has less to allocate to other processes. This causes a computer to noticeably slow down, and most customers can not figure out why.
Getting rid of spyware isn’t difficult, but it is not talked about by most computer stores and technical outlets. At Computer Exchange we have experienced a high level of success with a program called Ad-Aware. Designed by Lavasoft, it acts as similarly to Antivirus applications that scan a computer and remove viruses. This program scans the computer’s registry, hard drive and program files in order to find spyware applications. Ad-Aware then quarantines the spyware, and removes it. For only $36.95 customer’s can download the full version of the program and receive a disk in the mail. The full version scans and keeps an auto-protection running on the computer to protect it. One other way to avoid spyware intrusion on a PC is to avoid Peer 2 Peer applications. While providing the ability to share files with other users, these programs can cause problems for a computer.
If you are searching for Ad-Aware we provide a link on the main page of our website. Installing this program for just over $35.00 will save a customer on eventual labor bills as more and more spyware is installed on a computer. As system performance degrades a customer will determine that it is a relatively small amount of money to eliminate problems of spyware.
Jeff
Computer Exchange Sales Team