It has either happened to you or definitely someone you know. You have heard about it in the news and the crippling affects that it has had – its Spyware. It’s out there in the World Wide Web and there is nothing that you, I or anybody else can do about it. However, you can lower the risk of being infected by following some simple advice, the easiest of which is to have a protection barrier between your computer and the Internet – Spyware Protection.
Spyware Protection is two-fold and includes:
- Having Anti Spyware tools installed on your computer and,
- Following good security practices
The array of Spyware Protection tools on the market is mind-blowing. With the increase in Spyware came the specific requirement of Spyware Removal tools. Spyware Removal software ranges from the free Anti Spyware products such as Super Anti Spyware to the commercial use packages offered by Symantec and McAfee who have integrated Anti Spyware features into their existing Anti Virus products to offer a “total package”.
Various software packages even offer ‘real-time’ protection. Real-time protection basically monitors your computer for suspicious activity (like the type of activity that would be exhibited by Spyware, Adware and Viruses) while data is coming into the computer such as opening an email, or surfing the web or when a file already on the computer is opened or executed. This feature is great and means that all data in files coming into or already on the computer is analyzed each time that you attempt to access the specific files.
Apart from having software to help protect you, employing good security practices also provides a certain level of risk mitigation from the harmful elements out there. Some of these security practices include:
- Using a web browser other than Internet Explorer; such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, etc. As IE contains a significantly larger user base over other web browsers, and as such has a known track record of being targeted by hackers and the like.
- Limiting or stopping use of any Shareware software. If Shareware is still to be downloading and installed it should only be from reputable websites and not from generic file storage/sharing websites.
- Stopping use of Peer-to-Peer software like Kazaa and uTorrent. These tools promote file sharing between multiple users and are prone to having infected files being shared between users – with or without their knowledge.
By taking the correct steps to arm yourself with the right level of Spyware Protection, you can ensure that you have made it as hard as possible to become infected by Spyware.
