Average Windows PC infested with 28 spyware programs

Home PCs are increasingly likely to house software designed to watch each and every click the user makes,” Mark Ward reports for BBC News. “If a home was infested with tiny spy cameras the owner would no doubt want to know about it – especially if the information gathered was being analysed and sold for a profit, or if these alerted unsavoury types of the home-owners absence.”

“While rare is the home infested with tiny electronic spies, the same cannot be said of many Windows computers. On average every PC has 28 so-called spyware programs installed on it, according to an audit carried out by software firm Webroot and net service outfit Earthlink,” Ward reports. “The audit surveyed more than 1.5m PCs over the past year and found more than 41m instances of adware, tracking cookies, spyware, trojans and other malicious programs. Despite the different names, these do the same thing – watch what’s done on a PC and steal information about the user’s activities.”

“The most malicious versions, usually created by virus writers, use PCs to spew out spam, or steal the login names and passwords used on banking websites,” Ward reports.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Be careful out there if you’re connected to the Internet and using Windows. For information about smoothly adding a Macintosh to your computing arsenal (so you can surf the web with impunity), please click here.