Detect and Remove Spyware

It often seems that as time goes by a computer loses a significant amount of its original speed. Sometimes this lost speed is thought to be a normal part of computer aging but this is usually not the case. It takes a long time for a PC’s parts to become old enough for their aging to affect the way the computer will perform.

In this article, we will talk about the things that frequently play a part in helping a computer’s speed deteriorate and what we can do to prevent this from happening.

The Resources

When we talk about a computer’s resources, we are talking about the types and the ratings of the parts that comprise the computer. Those things that most influence the speed of the computer would be the motherboard, the CPU and the RAM. Still, even though we may install more RAM in our computer to give it a speed boast, most times this is done to accommodate new software or hardware we installed on the computer. However, if a computer has suddenly become inordinately slow, increasing the amount of RAM will not cure the problem.

What Has Slowed Our Computer Down?

When a computer is suffering from poor performance and slow speed, you can bet there is something that has entered into our computer and is working inside without our approval and is taking our computer’s speed away.

The culprit usually causing this type of computer slowdown is malware. The word malware is a contraction of the words malicious and software. Malware can be any type of computer virus or spyware. These things have the ability to steal a computer’s resources and slow it down to the point it can be difficult to use.

It is very important we keep all of our computers free of viruses and spyware because if we don’t, we risk our computer’s health and our financial health, should one of the spyware invaders steal our identities. Knowing whether it is spyware or viruses that have infected our computers is not important. We can install a software program on our computer that cleans all spyware and viruses and we will be all set even if we don’t know exactly what was sapping our computer’s strength.

The Registry Should Be Kept Clean As Well

Corruption will build up in a computer’s registry from regular every day use. The only way to avoid this is to not use the computer. This, of course, is not a viable option. So, what this means is not only do we need to keep viruses and spyware out of our computers, but we must also keep the registry free of corruption. Just like viruses and spyware will slow down our computers, so will registry corruption. In fact, some of the slowest and most unstable computers I’ve ever seen have become so because of registry corruption.

There are a couple of other things you should do that will help keep your computer up to top speed. For instance, when you install a new program, don’t choose the option of letting the program start automatically at computer start up. Failing to choose no to this option will mean you will always have this program running and using your resources. You don’t need this automatic start up as you can always start any program from “start-all programs.”

Still, it is most important to make sure you are free from spyware, viruses and registry corruption. If you do, your computer will likely continue to race down the information highway like it did the first day you used it.

Has there ever been a time you were enjoy web surfing only to be asked out of nowhere if you would like to play online poker, or maybe to buy a $500 foot massager? Have you ever had one, two, three, even ten popups obscure your view of a page? If this has happened to you, then you know all too well what it is like to have adware on your computer. Adware blocks your use of the web and slows down your PC’s performance, but it can also be an early warning sign of worse things to come. Where there is adware, spyware and viruses often follow. Spyware might just tell some software vendor how you are using their program. But spyware might also email your credit card numbers to a criminal’s office half way around the world. And viruses can destroy your computer altogether. Even if you avoid the very worst damage these three kinds of malware can do, chances are your hard drive will slow down to a crawl on the simplest of applications.

That’s the reason most computer users try to block adware downloads 100% of the time. Most computer users get programs that blast every trace of adware from their hard drives. There is no shortage of programs to do this, but how do you tell which one is best? How can you be sure you will never have to deal with adware ever again? These are critical questions to ask and hard questions to answer.

Adware blockers have to accomplish three things. First, any program that will really block adware from your PC has to be up to date on every definition of every adware invader lurking on the Internet. The software program must provide you with regularly updated libraries of definitions. What is meant by a “regular” update? If your software is a week or more behind the adware programmers, then it is not going to do you a whole lot of good.

Secondly, effective adware blockers need to work without a prompt from you. They should scan your hard drive on a regular schedule even if you do not click on a “scan now” button. The program has to run 24/7/365. It has to scan every file you download, every email you open, and have information on every site you visit.

Finally, adware programs that work well are seamlessly integrated with your web browser. This is the only way adware prevention and detection programs can protect you against malicious stealth downloads in real time. The program’s list of questionable sites has to be updated constantly, too. You want a program that neutralizes all malicious programs before they are ever downloaded to your PC.

It is not as hard as it sounds to block adware from your computer. Buy an anti-adware program that keeps its definitions up to date, stops you from clicking on problem websites, and checks every file that comes into your computer. Buy software that analyzes your hard drive without your having to remind it to scan. With the right software, annoying popups and slow performance on your PC will soon become a distant memory.

Most of us surf the Internet every day, never stopping to consider that our computers need protection. Then one day our computers slow down to a crawl, or crash, and we don’t know why. The reason often is that there is a virus, spyware, or both, plaguing our unprotected PCs.

In the good old days of the 1990’s, PC users only had to concern themselves about anti-virus software. There were hackers who sent out malicious code to paralyze PCs, but nobody was trying to destroy PCs with worms or phish for personal data with Trojan horses. It used to be enough just to buy an anti-virus program and keep it updated. If you kept your anti-virus program up to date, you were essentially 100% protected.

In 2009, it is not as simple. There are uncounted numbers of people whose aim in life it to harm your PC. They flood your PC with adware and spyware because they want to know what you are doing or they want to keep images of their products in front of your face whether you want to buy those products or not. They impose their will on your PC by stealth and they laugh that there is nothing you can do about it.

Everyone needs the security of spyware antivirus software. In truth, spyware antivirus software is so important that almost all anti-virus programs now come with a spyware detector in them.

Why Spyware Anti-virus Software is Important to You

The overwhelming majority of computer users don’t give spyware a second thought because it is not something you see when you use your computer. Spyware is a sneaky download that infects your computer while you are performing innocent tasks.

The problem is that the people who write spyware and send it out over the net don’t care how much they harm your computer. And if you clean it out, it often comes back in just hours or days. There are reliable statistics that indicate over 95% of all the computers in the world host spyware, and that spyware has become more common than viruses.

To maintain the smooth performance of your PC you simply must install spyware anti-virus software. Do this, and you will protect your computer the best you can for all the years you will use it.

How Do You Get Spyware on Your Computer?

There are several ways spyware finds its way onto your PC. For example, many manufacturers of the software programs you use add a spyware component. This spyware keeps track of what you do with their program. You may be advised of this when you click on the agreement that allows you to load the program, but most agreements bury their disclaimer deep in the fine print.

There’s just no way you can ever be sure you have removed all spyware from your computer, but using two spyware anti-virus software programs at once comes very close. Read reviews on most spyware anti-virus software programs by doing a Google search.

No PC user wants to own a computer that’s running slow because it is clogged with adware and spyware. These malicious intruders into your computer cache can come to your PC from almost anywhere on the World Wide Web. They can attack your PC when you download a file you should not have downloaded, or when you click on a junk email. They sometimes enter your computer when you land on a malicious website. But regardless of how they get into your computer, adware and spyware waste no time sapping computer performance. Even worse, some programs email your personal financial information for criminal use, or they expose your PC to even more malicious software to cause your computer even more havoc. You simply have to protect your PC from both kinds of malicious software, and this removal method needs to protect you 24/7.

There are three characteristics of good adware or spyware removal programs. Effective adware or spyware removal routines scan everything you view on the Internet. This kind of removal software should require minimal memory and it needs to operate at all times. If you have to scan your hard drive manually every time you download something from the net?and nobody can?eventually you will let something harmful slip through. The best programs are ever-vigilant against viruses and spyware.

Second, effective adware and spyware removal programs have to be capable of digging deep into your files. If adware or spyware already infects your PC, they could lurk almost anywhere. You may have trouble finding them, but they do not have trouble slowing your computer down. A good removal program scans every single file on your PC accurately. It makes use of the latest definitions, updated once a week, and it doesn’t let anything slip past it. An incomplete scan, or an out-of-date definition simply won’t do you any good.

The third and final way you can recognize useful adware and spyware removal software is filtering. These programs use filters and definitions to recognize harmful sites before you click on them. They will tell you to halt before you visit these malicious websites or, worse, open malicious files. Integrated into your browser, these software removal options tell you whenever you have stumbled onto a site other users have blacklisted. By identifying potentially harmful sites and files, effective and protective software keeps malicious files from ever infecting your PC.

Good anti-adware and anti-spyware programs do many things for you that help protect your computer against harm. These programs will set up a defensive perimeter around your files to make sure nothing ever sneaks in to cause your computer problems. Guarding your files, warning you about suspicious sites, and updating themselves, these programs help keep your computer healthy and keep it virus and spyware free.

Your PC is a very vulnerable machine. Every day when you log online, chances are you see the ads warning you what horrible things are going to sneak their way into your hard drive, destroy years of hard work, and email your credit card numbers to a criminal mob. So, it seems only sensible that the very first thing you want to do is find a reliable software package to help protect your computer against what everything that could wrong. But, what kind of software should you get? Do you need Anti-virus software or Anti-spyware software or both?

To answer that question, let’s first take a look at what anti-virus and anti-spyware programs protect your PC against. A virus is a small file that can attach itself to your hard drive. Viruses attack your computer surreptitiously from the Internet. When click on their file, or when a “timer” goes off, they launch their attacks. Virus can delete your data. They can edit your registry. Or they can slow everything to a crawl.

Spyware also arrives at your computer from the World Wide Web. Malicious programmers usually attach spyware to another piece of software. This program can come into your PC through email or off a third party website. Like a virus, it will activate when you open it. However, Spyware is not obviously harmful. Instead, the spyware program will start burrowing deep into your computer and sending information about your computer and your online activities to the person who created it. It might just be your email address. Soon your inbox is full of spam. Or it might be your financial records, stolen by an identity theft. The only way you can know whether you have spyware is the run a detection program, but you can make a good guess that it’s spyware if your computer runs slow.

So, you ask, what is the important distinction between anti-spyware and anti-virus software? The good news is, most of the time, modern computer protection provides you with both. Updating for both spyware and virus definitions at least every week, your protection software will know the definitions it needs to scan and disinfect your hard drive on a regular basis.

Anti-virus and anti-spyware programs typically integrate into your web browser and email. This function makes sure that malware programs never get into your computer in the first place. Anti-spyware software by itself may perform the same function, but spyware detection programs are usually more focused on deleting files that have infected your computer already. Anti-spyware programs often will stop you from logging on and warn you the pages contain malicious code or have been reported as installing spyware on other computers.

To keep your computer secure and malware-free, your best option is to obtain software that protects you against both problems. Anti-virus software and anti-spyware software in the same package afford you a more complete, robust protection against the ever growing number of malicious programs that threaten your computer from the World Wide Web.

There is an ever present threat to your computer online. A range of viruses and malware that includes trojans and worms can be picked up from downloads. Some threats are purely vandalistic, some are for commercial gain, including spyware and downloaders. In order to defend against these attacks you need a set of software tools

The main categories of software to consider are 1/ anti-virus 2/ genaral utilities, including anti-virus capability. An anti-virus package should be able to fix all attacks on your PC, including viruses, trojans and spyware. This task should only be entrusted to a recognised company, such as Norton, McAfee and AVG.

A second line of defence is always a good idea. Perhaps use a general utilities suite, with an anti-virus capability and a second specialist anti-virus package. For instance Norton Utilities or McAfee Internet Security Suite. Specialist anti-virus products include AVG or Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, both of which have free versions.

Anti-virus packages must have frequent updates, virtually daily to counter the rapidly evolving threats to the online community. If it does not update frequently it is no good.

One option is to use Norton Utilities, which includes a whole suite of maintenance software to keep a computer free of problems, as well as anti-virus protection. This includes such things as cleanup software to remove superfluous files, defragmentation, one button checkup, registry maintenance, file backup and other utilities which are very important in the fight against malware. Some software such as anti-virus and cleanup tools help avoid problems arising, while others such as backup and disk restore enable recovery after a problem has been removed. This could be backed up by a free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware or AVG’s anti-virus product.

Always keep your computers defences under review. If necessary use a paid version of anti-virus software as a backup, but free versions are currently very good.

Do the general maintenance tasks regularly. This includes defragmentation, registry cleaning and removing unwanted files. Files should be backed up every few days, or daily if the information is vital. It can be done at night or whenever the computer is out of use. It can be done automatically to minimize labour.

Do not forget to use your defences against the the constantly changing threats to your computer. Frequent application is essential, otherwise they are just an unused icon on your monitor screen.

Spybot S&D is one of my favorite anti-spyware tools. I’ve been removing spyware for years, and Spybot has helped me on each and every instance. I’m not saying is the only anti-spyware tool out there, but because of it’s dedicated creator, great and simple user interface but yet advanced options makes it a great ally in the battle against several types of malicious software.

Spybot screenshot

Spybot S&D offers a very easy and intuitive UI (user interface), that after following a few simple steps can help you get rid of the unwanted software.

Download

We have a link to this application in our “tools” page, but you can also obtain the latest release from the original Spybot S&D website: www.safer-networking.org

1. Select your location by choosing your language/location flag.
2. Click on the “Download” link, located on the top right side.
3. Scroll down until you reach the downloads section and click on the download cube icon.
4. Now you have to select a file server from where to download it, the main mirrors are usually the best option, keep in mind that when you click on the “download here” link, this will redirect you to the website that is actually hosting the file, some of those websites have confusing advertising, so make sure you select the right download button.

Be aware of deceiving download links

Installation

The installation process is a very intuitive one, after you’ve downloaded the installation file, run it and follow the simple steps. My recommendation is that less advanced users disable the permanent protection option called “TeaTimer”, not because is a bad tool, actually it’s a very good one, but because it’s there to alert and prevent changes in the windows registry, which may confuse and annoy the common user.

Noobie users may want to disable the TeaTimer option

First Use

After you install Spybot, a wizard will prompt you to define some simple setting and it will ask you to update it’s database of definitions, it’s very important to keep anti-malware software updated. This wizard will also prompt you to “immunize” your system, immunization protects your computer against some types of spyware and malicious websites that promote them.

Performing a system scan

It’s important to understand that Spybot is not a resident application, this means that it doesn’t protect your computer at all times, but instead it’s a standalone application that you will have to run often, my experience tells me that running Spybot every couple weeks is a good procedure (of course you must have a resident antivirus application running at all times). To scan your system follow this steps:

1. Open Spybot
2. Update it by clicking “Search for Updates” and download all necessary updates. (skip if you recently did this)
3. Start the scan by clicking on the “Check for problems” button
4. Spybot will prompt you to delete the temporary files, click yes
5. You will now see at the bottom of the application, a filling green bar moving toward the right, this indicated scanning activity and progress, the amount of time it takes to complete this task depends on your system specs
6. Now that it has finished scanning, Spybot will select all problems by default, items marked in red indicate a real threat and items colored in blue indicate tracking usage. In the case that Spybot has found a malicious piece of software, you need to get rid of it, to do that, make sure you have items selected and click on the button labeled “Fix selected problems”, in some cases it can take several minutes to remove all the threats so you have to wait for the success message.
7. If there still are malicious traces, running Spybot in Windows Safe Mode is highly recommended.

And that’s basically it, remember to always update and run Spybot as often as possible.