“Talk about a lost weekend! As I write this Monday, I’ve just spent the better part of two days trying to remove adware and spyware from my wife’s computer. I’m not done yet,” Mike Wendland reports for The Detroit Free Press. “Adware and spyware are terms that are used pretty much interchangeably to describe hidden programs that settle surreptitiously into your hard drive to collect information on your Internet surfing habits so they can then display advertisements in your Web browser. These pernicious programs have become the scourge of the Internet.”
Wendland reports, “If you’re a Windows user, I can just about guarantee you have some on your machine. They get there in sneaky, sleazy ways, usually piggybacking on some free program or application you downloaded. Then they imbed themselves into out-of-the-way places on your hard drive.”
“The practice is so unscrupulous that Internet security circles now refer to adware and spyware as malware, as in malicious software — a term that used to be relegated strictly to worms and viruses,” Wendland reports. “That’s because slimy advertisers, borrowing the techniques of hackers, have written their come-ons and dubious offers into computer code that is almost impossible for the casual user to detect and almost as difficult to remove — which is why I’ve been tied up so long scrubbing my wife’s Dell… When I used a bunch of different spyware cleaning programs to sweep her machine, I found over 200 different spyware apps imbedded in her system. Dumping them is not an easy task. Each sweep takes about a half-hour, and I’ve had to run dozens of sweeps.”
Wendland reports, “This is a problem that is almost totally tied to Microsoft Windows. I mostly use Apple Macintosh computers. In two years of doing so, I have never had a single instance of spyware or adware infestation… The spyware problem is getting worse, and sooner or later, you’re going to have to deal with it — and regularly keep dealing with it. Unless, of course, you get a Mac.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Get a Mac is good advice, Mike, but what’s your wife doing with a Dell in the first place?
For our Windows-only friends interested in a better way, you can find information about adding a safe, secure, powerful, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal here.
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