the WMUB Help Desk Blog

Spyware is different from viruses, worms and Trojan horses. You must protect your PC against both.

UPDATE 8/26/05: Some users have posted their recommendations in the form of comments below. While some or all of these may be perfectly fine, the Help Desk gang (the Dukes of URL) has NOT reviewed these products and cannot certify them as acceptable. Some insidious spyware actually masquerades as anti-spyware tools. Frankly, the language on some of the web pages recommended by our commentators below is a little suspect. Caveal emptor ("let the buyer beware"). We stand by our recommendations to use AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Microsoft's anti-spyware tool (now called Windows Defender) and urge caution on anything else.

Spyware is software that either takes control of your screen and presents you with unwanted pop-up ads, or more sinisterly, spies on your computer activity without your knowledge. At this point, it appears to be a problem only for PCs, but there is no guarantee that Macs will not be affected in the future.

To combat spyware:

--We recommend 3 programs. Each appears to catch different problems, and there is no difficulty with running all 3:

(1) Spybot Search and Destroy (find in download.com).

(2) Ad-Aware by Lavasoft

(3) Microsoft's AntiSpyware, now in beta

For all 3 programs:

--Run in Safe Mode (at startup, repeatedly press the F8 key until it asks if you want to boot into Safe Mode).

--Use the most current version

--Run regular updates of definitions -- daily is not too often, sad to say.

--Windows XP users should find that installing Service Pack 2 may help.

--Consider using a browser other than Internet Explorer, which is a frequent conduit for malicious software. We recommend Mozilla's FireFox browser as an alternative.