by Sheri Stuart

Created on: February 25, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Have you noticed that your Intenet connection seems a little sluggish? Maybe it takes a few extra seconds for your favorite program to load. Have you been hearing funny noises when running certain programs?
These are all symptoms of spyware in your system. Spyware is a little piece of code, usually store in a cookie or registry entry, depending on whther it originated on a web page you visited, or a program you installed. Basically, spyware is ideaaly used as a marketing tool, to monitor what kind of sites you visit when you are on the Internet.

There are two main types of spyware: tracking cookies, which are usually placedon your computer by a webpage you visited, and regitry entries, which are usually acquired when you download music or other media files from the Internet. A majority of these are benign, and easily eliminated when you clear your cache, but a few are malicious, and fall into the same category as some of the lesser trojan viruses. These are the ones that cause your system run slowly and your Internet connection to put a huge drain on your CPU.
It is really quite simple to eliminate spyware from your system. There are many commercial applications to not only remove these files from your system, but also to inoculate your system and prevent them from ever getting on your computer. Many of these very useful tools can be located at Download.com or at Tucows.com. Be aware, though, that if you search for spware tools on either of these sites, that some of the results will be for products that contain spyware themselves. These applications can vary in price from free to very expensive, and some of the free applications are just as effective as the expensive ones. The most widely used and trusted spyware removal applications are AdAware, by LavaSoft, and Spybot, search and destroy. Both are very effective. AdAware has a free version, but it does have limitations. Spybot is free, and highly effctive. LavaSoft also makes a spyware prevention tool that works in conjunctiion with AdAware, but it is not free. The better spyware prevention tool is SpyWareBlaster, which is made by Javacool Software, and is free to use.

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