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How Can You Get Infected
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Remove Spyware
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Views:51284
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Most of the free software that exists on the Internet is created for advertising purposes, with the exception of the applications created by Open Source Foundations like the Mozilla Foundation. Some applications will display a banner at the top of the window, some will not display any advertising but will give you only a set of limited features comparing to the paid version. All of this is perfectly fine and there are applications like the Opera Internet Browser that will display advertisements in a moderate manner.
Things are starting to go wrong when the free program will generate pop-up windows all the time, will monitor your internet activity for statistical data, will redirect your Internet Explorer searches and will simply not go away once installed. Here are the main ways of getting spyware on a computer:
Installing File Sharing Applications
If you want to get infected what you have to do first is to download some "freeware" file sharing programs. Usually people cause the infection this way because they want to download free music. These file sharing applications come bundled with a multitude of advertising programs. A lot of times people think they download music but they download viruses instead as file sharing networks are one of the preferred way of spreading for malicious software.
Adding Toolbars to Internet Explorer
There are certain "pop-up blocker toolbars" like the WebSearch Toolbar that will hijack your internet searches and will generate a pop-up every minute. Some of the toolbars though are perfectly fine and useful like the Google toolbar or the Yahoo toolbar.
Installing Fake Antispyware or Registry Cleanup Programs
Some of the worst pests of the internet are the fake antispyware programs like SpySherrif, Virtual Bouncer or SpyAxe. The trial version of these programs will completely take over your computer warning you every second that you have spyware even if the system has no spyware installed. One of their favorite way to warn you is to change the desktop to a wallpaper that looks like this:
You cannot change this wallpaper because they disable the desktop tab in the display properties. The same scam is done with registry cleanup programs like Winfixer. The problem will not go away unless you buy the program. These programs are also called Rogue antispyware.
Browsing Illegal Sites
If you browse some "free" adult entertainment sites or search for illegal software serial numbers on crackspider.net or other sites like it, you could get the worst spyware programs ever made: Coolwebsearch, Trojan.Vundo, Icannnews, Crackspider..,. This programs are very hard to remove, some of them are even considered viruses because they modify the structure of the operating system and cannot be removed unless we remove the operating system itself.
One spyware program will install five others
Once you got one spyware program installed that program will install its friends. In two days you will have fifty extra programs installed that you never heard of. That's why when you remove spyware if you only miss one program that program will reinstall all the garbage in a very short period of time.
For this study I have installed the filesharing applications: Kazaa and Limewire, I have added the search toolbar called Web Search to my Internet Explorer, I went to crackspider.net and searched for a serial number for Norton and the first result of the search was a file which I believe installed a nasty variant of CoolWebSearch.Then I agreed to install everything the pop-ups prompted me to install. Some of the applications were just harmless adwares, some were the worst things that the Internet has spawned.
 
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Submitted by Paul Ionescu
Last modified 2007-09-30 | |
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