subject: Deleting Spyware - Do It For Your Computer And Your Financial Well-being [print this page] There are important computer maintenance tools around. Amongst them is the spyware cleaner. These are highly recommended for anyone who ever visits the internet because most types of spyware, generally speaking, use the internet to work their way into your personal computer.
Spyware can do some pretty nasty things. It can follow you to the websites you are visiting and take note of any keystrokes you enter into your keyboard. So, it can actually tell what you have written after you have logged onto a website. This is how certain types of spyware, known as keyloggers, can steal your passwords and banking account numbers.
The Trojan Horse Virus
Another type of spyware are Trojans. A Trojan, or Trojan horse, is sort of half-virus, half-spyware. It is spyware because it is often delivered to your computer through the internet. Normally, it makes its way onto your hard drive via downloading files or through the dreaded "Active X." It is a virus because it can do virus-like things to your computer. For instance, a Trojan can be a worm as well. A worm is a very dangerous virus.
Viruses are executable files, so you have to do something to activate them, like open up an email attachment. As you have just learned, a Trojan works differently. This means, this very wise practice of not opening email attachments doesn't inoculate you against the part virus, part spyware Trojan.
Don't Let Temporary Internet Files Become a Permanent Fixture
Even when you are not cruising around the net, you usually have thousands of temporary internet files stored on your hard drive. I say usually because you can erase them through your internet options. You can also use a privacy program which takes care of this for you.
Erasing these files regularly is a good policy because to spyware, they are a wealth of information. Adware, which is a type of spyware, simply wants to know what kind of sites you visit and temporary internet files tell them exactly.
Spyware Causes More Trouble Unintentionally
Spying on us is what spyware does naturally. However, while accomplishing its nefarious mission, it uses our computer's resources. So, while it is present, it will make our computers prone to error messages and typically it will make the computer very slow.
This is also the same effect registry corruption has on a PC. Spyware and registry corruption go hand in hand. In fact, spyware is one of the many things that will corrupt a registry.
In today's world there is only one way to avoid spyware. This way is to never go online. This is not a very practical plan. So, the best you really can do is use a spyware cleaner. Unfortunately, most virus cleaners are not capable of removing all spyware. So, make sure your virus cleaner is one of those that does, or install a separate spyware cleaner. One way or another, make sure you are protected against all this horrible stuff.
