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| SECURITY |
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The following guide is not just about removing "spyware" and "adware", but a detailed prevention tutorial. The tools and programs used in this guide will block spyware from being installed on your computer. Although I can't guarantee following this guide will get every little bit of spyware off of your system, but if you use these tools with some common sense, you can become spyware and adware-free. Now, the obvious question is, what's spyware? Spyware is a cookie or program that is usually installed automatically onto your system by another program or from a website without you knowing about it, possible without your permission. This spyware then watches (spies) on you while you browse the web, in some cases it will monitor you sending e-mails or playing games. The spyware then collects information on your activities and sends it back to the author/source. Occasionally, what's sent back can be personal information or sensitive data, which is also known as "calling home". Ironically, you will sometimes receive pop-ups which advertise Internet security, or even "Pop-up blockers", in some severe documented case spyware has been known to steal your most safeguarded information from your computer, such as credit card and or social security numbers. You can read about this type of spyware and the company that makes them -here- This "company" is known as VX2. This name combined with others like VX2.BetterInternet, this spyware is for all intensive purposes in essence a virus. The afore mentioned VX2.BetterInternet is almost worse than any virus out there. It can't be remove from your system by normal means. You actually have to reformat your system and install Windows again. You can read more about this -here- If you read through all of the information there, you will see that a DriverHeaven Gold Member (The_Neon_Cowboy), purposely infected his computer with this to see what exactly it did - turns out it altered a lot of files on his computer and even created some files, as well as adding over three Megabytes of entries to his system registry. This is one reason why it is extremely important to prevent it from being installed in the first place. Just where this particular piece of spyware comes from isn't always clear sometimes. The most common spyware comes from a company called "Gator", such as "Comet Cursor" and "Hotbar". Some free programs that say they let you freely ad new "screen savers" and etc., are actually not free at all. They can contain spyware to monitor your web-browsing frequencies, collect your data and advertise to you based off the information gathered. Before you start to panic, keep in mind not every free program contains spyware. If you would like information regarding some of the companies that create this spyware, check out this page -here- Free honest programs will clearly state that in order to use them you will have "adware" installed on your system to support free use of the program. Programs that don't state clearly that it installs adware to support free use, probably is not worth using at all anyway. Some spyware can affect Online gaming, if spyware is running in the background it can lower your system's performance, or cause Windows to become unstable. "Ping" can also be affected by any spyware running. The programs that will be used in this guide are all freeware, and contain_no_adware_or_spyware. This is done because the cost of keeping your computer safe has become expensive. Anti-viral programs, spam filters, and etc., this shouldn't cost you anything - nothing more than a little time. Now, we cannot guarantee that following this guide will work for everyone, It should work for most people, however, there may be those who the "unremovable stuff", like VX2 spyware. Your computer could be infected with so much spyware that irreversible damage has been done to your system. If this is the case, stability might be a problem, in these case a fresh install of Windows will be the best thing to do, if not the only option. Onto the purpose of this guide. The instructions in this guide are as detailed as possible, as to allow new computer users to follow along.
Next: Ad-aware
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