About Spyware

Spyware is a commonly misconceived term. Originally spyware was defined as software which tracks web surfing behaviour, and reports back personal information to the software maker - secretly, for money making purposes. This has evolved into fully legal tracking and advertisement based adware which essentially does exactly that.

Spyware.. now spyware is a difficult term to define. Many users would call a keylogger "spyware" because it spies on them. This is good reasoning and the word spyware in use should really be a term to describe spying. Actual definition is less important than perceived meaning and usage of the term spyware.

This therefore is a wide selection of malicious software including many classes of trojans, keyloggers, banker trojans, login and pass stealers and many other spy tools. Remote access trojans include many spying features for the attacker. These are very powerful tools which combine spying tools, and give other access to a machine such as process manager.

A modern antivirus scanner must detect all types of malicious code, in addition to the many different types of viruses which caused the beginning of antivirus software. These programs now need to detect many types of trojans, lots of adware and similar programs, some of which are branded trojans. An example is a trojan clicker. This type of trojan is designed to "click" website links visiting the site from an infected machine to generate fake hits and make money. Money is the prime source of malicious software and being protected begins with being smart, be careful.

After setting up protection of a powerful antivirus scanner, free anti spyware specific programs are very easy to obtain. From a lot of testing and evaluation, most of the paid programs are junk. The best protection available is the antivirus with best detecion (KAV) plus FREE tools and free programs. Start with Microsoft AntiSpyware, and AdAware free. Ewido and Spybot make up the backup scanners, and ALL of these are free!

My suggestions to add to this depend on the user's needs. Advanced and more security inclined users should choose from tools such as ProcessGuard and Outpost Pro. These are super protection against even the worst trojan users and many black hat hackers. With other protection in place, the chances of being compromised by someone intending to spy, steal personal data or your identity, are very very low. What is security? this is security.