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About Spyware and Adware :
To me nothing more than viruses, these hidden software programs transmit user information via the Internet to advertisers in exchange
for free downloaded software. According to one adware company, Radiate, "Consumers can click on banners (within the software) and receive cached web site pages to view or to
order advertised products. When the user goes back online, the appropriate information is sent to the advertiser and tracked by Radiate."
Radiate uses a software program called Aureate. It is bundled with many free applications. There are additional companies that offer other free products that do basically the
same thing--record a user's browsing habits, then upload that information via the Internet in exchange for more advertising. Any offline application that includes banner
advertising in its user interface may be using spyware. The next time you connect to the Internet, information gathered about which ads you clicked on, and the duration of
your visit to the advertiser's site, will be sent back to the respective advertisers. A fresh supply of ads--usually based on your previous ad-clicks or demographic
information supplied at the time of the installation--will be sent back to your application's interface to replace the current ads.
Say you grow tired of your free application and use Windows to Add/Remove it from your system. Usually the spyware will remain on your computer, often buried within the
Windows System Registry, and still hogging valuable resources thereby slowing down your computer.
Probably half of all home PCs are infected with some kind of ad-ware or spy-ware. They usually come as programs hidden in free software or screen savers (always read the
EULA), or sneak in from porn, warez or game sites. To get an idea of how virus distribution companies work, check out OUTERINFO.COM and browse through their site to see how incredibly sanitized and legitimate they make their
"service" appear. Just don't download anything from their site. If you do I guarantee within a week your computer will be useless except as maybe a doorstop. By themselves
these applications are bad enough, but once you have one, the window is opened for other similar viruses that multiply exponentially until a total meltdown occurs. A few
viruses these companies use are Gator, New.Net, CyDoor, Aureate, Ezula, and PhoenixNet which are easy to remove. More aggressive ones include Mirar, Smitfraud, Vundo and
aBetterInternet which elude, damage, or are simply immune to all scan software because no matter how many times you kill them, their "eggs" hatch on the next reboot and a
manual intervention or hard drive wipe is almost always required to keep them from reinstalling. Extortionware, also called Ransomware or Scareware, are applications that trick you into downloading their product, which infects the machine with a set of progressive viruses, then runs fake scans to scare you into giving them your credit card number in exchange for a fake fix. The following free programs will find and eliminate the easy ones. For a
printable procedure of how I usually work on infected PCs, click HERE:
AD-AWARESPYBOTSPYWARE REMOVAL TOOLS
EXTORTIONWARE REMOVAL
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