Is Someone Spying On You?
I haven't seen anything about spyware on the site, so I thought I would post this. Do you know what spyware is? I got this from an article in Smart Computing Magazine . The article was called, "I Know Where You Surfed Last Summer" (January 2002, p.42-44). "Spyware is a software component installed on your PC that gathers information about you (generally pertaining to your ownline activities) and transfers that information from your PC to advertisers or other companies/individuals without your knowledge or permission. The spyware component itself is often incoporated into otherwise benign software, such as game demos, MP3 players, and the like. The exact information a spyware program obtains may be something as simple as listing the MP3 selections you store on your PC or recent Web sites that you've visited. In extremely malicious cases, it may transfer password files or other sensitive information." Some well known examples of spyware are: Gator/Kazaa/Download Accelerator/Go!Zilla What can you do to protect yourself from spying? There are some programs that can help. Ad-Aware is a freeware program that can detect and remove many kinds of spyware. Check out their site at www.lavasoft.de SpyBlocker is another freeware program that can help. It blocks spyware elements from "calling home" to the spyware companies. Just put SpyBlocker in a search engine, and you will find their site. Also Camtech has a free download called Spychecker. It's basically a list of freeware that contains spyware. Just put "Spychecker" in a search engine. You should find it. You can check out a program before you put it on your box. You might want to install Ad-Aware and use it to check out everything you install. HTH. Forewarned is forearmed.