Anti-Spyware

What is Spyware

Spyware is a parasite program that is installed on your computer by a website using Microsoft Internet Explorer ActiveX controls on your computer. The intent is for the originating web site to be able to get feedback from your computer. Most people consider this an invasion of privacy and as the number of these programs installed on your computer grows it tends to really drag down the performance of your computer.

More Information

MS has come out with a free spyware defense application called Windows Defender. It's actually pretty good. It is best as a defense against new spyware getting on your computer. See http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=435BFCE7-DA2B-4A6A-AFA4-F7F14E605A0D&displaylang=en for information and the download. Our best recommendation is for using Windows Defender in conjunction with Spybot Search & Destroy (see http://www.spybot.info/en/download/index.html ).

More information, including links to download other free anti-spyware software, can be found at: http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/software.html#free  In addition to detect and remove software you may want to install a program that inoculates your computer from having these parasites installed.

The options may be overwhelming, so if you are looking for direction, we have used Spybot Search & Destroy as a good free removal tool and recommend Windows Defender for keeping spyware off your computer.