Spyware and Internet Security 101

I found an article by Niall Roche on Spyware and Internet Security 101. Read it and I hope you can gain something valuable from it.

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Spyware and Internet Security 101
by Niall Roche

If you aren't a heavy computer user, you may have never heard of spyware, malware or adware. Even if you have heard of it, you may have ignored all the buzz about it. After all, it isn't that big a deal, right? Actually, spyware is a very serious problem. This software is designed to gather information about your financial and personal information, including all of your online activity. In the hands of a cybercriminal, this information can cause a lot of damage. People who don't know how unsafe it is to use computers without software or hardware protection are as open to attack as a bank that doesn't lock the doors.

Spyware, as the name implies, is software that is created to spy on you in a way that allows it to go undiscovered. It collects all sorts of data, from where you go on the internet to what passwords you use. If this doesn't worry you, you may not be thinking about all of the things you do on the internet, including shopping with your credit cards, online banking and even inputting your social security number on secure sites, such as online tax programs. The information that is gathered goes right to the creator of the program, who can use the information to steal your identity, ruin your credit and do all sorts of additional damage.

So, how do you even get spyware on your computer when you don't download programs or open email attachments? Unfortunately, it doesn't need your help to arrive on your computer. All you have to do is visit an infected website. If you are without proper security software protection, you'll never even realize the website downloaded a program to your computer. It only takes seconds for the damage to occur and you don't have to do anything to start the process. Simply visiting the site will trigger the download. Besides collecting information, some of these nasty little programs come with an unwelcome bonus - a Trojan virus.

Knowing that websites can just download this type of malicious software doesn't help if you don't know which types of websites to avoid. Usually, if a website is set up to provide free downloads of porn, warez, or mp3s, it is set up so the owner can profit from unsuspecting victims. As you click on a download link for a cool new game, you are actually setting yourself up for a major mess. It looks like nothing bad happened, since you get the game and it seems to work. However, along with the game, a spyware maker will have added programs that look like innocent helper applications for the game, but are actually collecting your information. You find out what is going on when you are bombarded by useless junk mail and your computer slows to a snails pace from all the viruses on your hard drive. Then, you get your credit card statements and realize that they are filled with charges someone else made.

Of course, the guys who make this type of software aren't going to depend on just one way to get their nasty little surprise on your hard drive. They also love to include these malicious programs with free software programs. Remember the old adage "No such thing as a free lunch" whenever you decide to opt for free software instead of paying for an application from a reputable software manufacturer. Another trick that these crooks have recently started using is requiring people who download their free movies or mp3s to use a media player they have created to play them. Of course, that media player comes complete with tons of malicious programs such as spyware and even computer viruses.

You may be wondering how to find out whether you are already infected? The easiest way to see if something is going on is to look at your computer's performance. Is it moving very slowly? Does it take a long time for your browser to respond? Do windows and ads you didn't open pop up on your screen? Those are all signs that point to an infestation on your computer.

Once you realize that you have a problem, you'll need to deal with it right away. The easiest way is to get an anti-spyware program, such as Lavasoft Adaware or Spybot Search and Destroy. They will clear up your current problem. Then, you should stop them from coming back with a combined protection plan that uses anti-virus software and a good firewall program. The anti-spyware program will catch any programs that somehow manage to get through the cracks.

Remember, these types of programs are nothing to fool around with. As annoying as it is to have pop-ups opening faster than you can close them, having a big financial mess to clean up is even worse.

Is your Internet connection working so slowly ye just wanna cry? You know there's spyware in there somewhere but don't know how to find it. Find the best spyware program for your problem right now by visiting www.cpusecurity.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Niall_Roche
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Another Solution To The Keyloggers Problem

Remember my post about RoboForm? Now this is another password manager and it's completely free and it's an open source software. In order to fight keyloggers and to prevent it from stealing your password, it's better for you to use a password manager. So you will only need to remember one password.

The software that I'm talking about is KeePass Password Safe. You can download it at http://keepass.info/ . KeePass is also one of the portable software. It means that you can bring it in your USB Flash Drive anywhere and you don't have to worry about remembering your passwords.

This is another alternatives other than RoboForm and you can choose which software that you would like to choose. If you want to download RoboForm, download it here - http://ebiztools4u.com/recommends/RoboForm - and if you want to download the KeePass, download it at its official website http://keepass.info/download.html

P.S - Download my free report on spyware here - http://www.chuangcomputer.com/getmyfile.php?file=securespyware.zip

Can't Remove Spyware Threats?

So, you've installed Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware 2007 in your system and there are some threats that cannot be remove by these software. How can you remove the threats?

There are three solutions that I know. First of all, use HijackThis to remove any malicious registry entries. However, please remember that removing wrong entries will affect your system.

The second solution is by installing SUPERAntiSpyware. It's an anti-spyware software and it's more effective in removing stubborn threats. However it only has a small spyware database.

Another software is SmitFraudFix. This software has helped me countless time in removing stubborn threats and I like it very much. Remember to install McAfee Site Advisor to help you determine which website is malicious in order to protect your system from spyware threat.

Spyware Cleaner - How To Delete Spyware From Your System

This is one of my articles from Ezinearticles.com website and it was rated 3 stars by the readers.

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Spyware Cleaner - How To Delete Spyware From Your System
by Azwan Asmat

Spyware is software that will send information about your browsing habit to the hackers. They will use it for themselves or they will sell it to the advertisers. It can also cause a lot of problems to your PC, but there are ways to remove it.

If you're infected by spyware, it can change your homepage and the Internet connection will become very slow. Other than that, it will also make your startup time longer and your system will become very slow when loading a program.

If you have these problems, then it is possible that your computer is infected by spyware and in order to get rid of it, you need software that can remove it from your system.

The software that you need are Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware 2007. Both are very good products because both can detect most threats and remove it from your system. After installing the software, make sure you update both of it so you can get the latest threats definition. After that, scan your system and remove every threat that they found.

In order to protect yourself from visiting malicious websites, download and install McAfee Site Advisor. It will warn you if you're visiting suspicious websites when you're online. After that, you need to install Spyware Terminator because it has a real-time protection.

Real-time protection is essential because it can detect threats coming to your system right away. Other than these software, having a good antivirus can also help you to protect your computer.

In conclusion, you need Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware 2007, Spyware Terminator and McAfee Site Advisor to protect you from this type of threat.

Azwan Asmat is the author of Chuang Computer Tips - http://chuangcomputer.blogspot.com/ - Want to know the secret of securing your PC from dangerous spyware, adware, and malware programs that can ruin your PC, your finances, and your sanity! Visit http://www.chuangcomputer.com/pcsafety/ for more info.

"How To Secure Your Computer From Spyware" Download

My e-course subscribers have received this ebook several days ago and as I promised, I'm going to release it to public right now.

This report only covers basic knowledge on how to detect and remove spyware. You can download the report here
http://www.chuangcomputer.com/getmyfile.php?file=securespyware.zip

Download, read it and pass it to anyone that you think will benefit from it. If you want to give me some feedbacks, feel free to do so by commenting here or email me at azwan[at]chuangcomputer.com. I'll be glad to have some feedbacks.

If I update this ebook in the future, I will post it on this blog and you can download it for free.

Malware - Drive-by Download

Read this story:

Steve is a person who takes Internet security seriously. He installed protection software such as antivirus and anti-spyware. But he didn't installed a firewall because he thinks he already has enough protection.

However, there was one time when Steve click a banner ad and was brought to a malicious website. He closed the website after reading it for a while. On the same day, he received an anonymous HTML email and after he read it, he deleted the email.

But, at this moment, Steve has been infected by malware. It's because, malware can be downloaded into your system if you've visited malicious websites or open malicious HTML emails.

This is called drive-by download and malicious software can easily slipped into your system without you knowing. Therefore, be careful when visiting a website and if you've already visited malicious websites, make sure to scan your computer to remove the threats.

To avoid reading HTML emails, configure your email clients to read all message in plain text. It's safer.

New Free Report - How To Secure Your Computer From Spyware, How To Filter Spam Using PopTray

I'm almost finish creating my new report for spyware protecion. It covers basic spyware protection knowledge and I'm going to make it available for free. I hope the report will help everyone who don't know a thing about spyware or knowledge on how to remove it.

Right now I'm just checking for grammar and spelling mistakes in this special report. I will give you guys the direct link for this report and you don't have to subscribe to my 5-day e-course to get it. However, my e-course subscribers will get a special security resource report in addition to this report and they will get it first before I post the link to this blog. In that report, they will find links to free firewalls, antiviruses,anti-spyware, spam blocking tools and so much more.

I'm not so sure when I will be able to finish this report because I will be very busy this week and next week. However, I will try to post useful tips everyday to this blog.

For today's tip, I'm going to share with you how PopTray managed to filter spam from my inbox.

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How To Filter Spam Using PopTray
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PopTray is a freeware where it will check for email messages in your inbox every 5 minutes. It also has 'rules' feature where it will be able to set rules for spam messages. Everytime you received spam emails, right click to the emails and you can choose either to add rule to email from sender or to add rule to email with subject.

The rules are mark message as spam or delete message. Therefore, everytime an email come with the same subject or from the same sender, it will automatically deleted or marked as spam for manual deletion.

It's actually a good program because you can filter your inbox from spam message automatically. Other than that, you can also preview the emails and it will show you the body and the raw message. This way, you can identify a phishing email because you can see where the link in the phishing email pointed to.

I strongly suggest you to download this freeware to improve your computer security.

P.S - If you would like to subscribe to my e-course, feel free to do so here http://www.chuangcomputer.com/5day

*Ebook cover design by Chaker Saaf

How To Get Rid of Spyware

Spyware is malicious software designed to send your private information such as browsing habit to the hackers and it can bring many disasters to you and your computer. It can make your computer to become slow in performance, change your home page, and you will also have a slow Internet connection.

It can also cause you a new PC if you don’t learn how to remove it. Lavasoft reported that 850,000 people have replaced their computer because of spyware infection and these stats only shows the first half of 2007. 90% of computer users in U.S are infected by the same type of infection and most of them don’t know how to remove it.

In this article, I will explain briefly on how to detect this type of infection and how to remove it and I will also tell you two symptoms if you got infected. First of all, if you notice that your home page has changed without you changing it, it may be caused by malicious software. Second, your computer performance speed and online browsing speed have become so slow. These two reasons show that you’ve been infected and you need to remove the threats as soon as possible.

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Editor's note: I wrote this article in hope to help many other people out there who don't know how to remove spyware. However, if you would like to learn more, I suggest you to purchase PC Safety 101 here http://www.chuangcomputer.com/pcsafety There are lots of information in that ebook and the bonuses will help you a lot in dealing with computer problems.
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Nowadays, spyware work almost similar with adware. It will also display advertisements while you’re online. How you can get infected by this type of infection? You might have downloaded software that contains malicious software or maybe you’ve clicked pop-up ads that want you to update your security settings. Another reason is that you’ve visited websites that download the malware without your consent to your computer.

In order to remove it, you need to download anti-spyware programs that can detect and remove any malicious software installed in your system. Another type of protection software that you need is software that has a real-time protection. Having this feature is essential and will make you safer from some threats.

Unlike antivirus, you can have more than one anti-spyware in your system. Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy are software that I recommend for you to use in your system. If you’re using Microsoft Windows XP operating system, download Windows Defender because it has a real-time protection. If you prefer other software, I would like to recommend Spyware Terminator because it also has a real-time protection.

Download and update the software that I’ve mentioned and you can get rid of those nasty pests inside your computer. However, you can still get infected if you don’t arm yourself with essential knowledge about online threats.

Azwan Asmat is the author of Chuang Computer Tips - http://chuangcomputer.blogspot.com/ - Want to know the secret of securing your PC from dangerous spyware, adware, and malware programs that can ruin your PC, your finances, and your sanity?!

Visit http://www.chuangcomputer.com/5day for more info

5 Reasons Why You Need PC Protection Software

The Internet is a place with loads of information. In just one
click, we can find what we need in one place.

As of right now, there are 6,574,666,417 Internet users worldwide
(stats by Internet World Stats) and this number is increasing
everyday. Because of the number of users, security become an issue
for Internet users.

Internet users are faced with many online threats everyday. In the
nineties,the Michaelangelo virus storm through the Internet and in
the year 2000, the ILOVEYOU worm appeared.

Let me tell you five reasons why you should protect your PC and
why I should do the same.

1) Adware

Have you ever wondered why you're getting the same popup everytime
you open your web browser? This software is called adware and it
displays advertisement in your PC. The software will installs
itself in your PC and it's difficult to uninstall it and it also
can slow down your PC.

2) Browser Hijackers

When you open your web browser, your home page has changed.
In this case, it is the browser hijackers that changed your home page.
Other than changing your home page, it can disable your Internet Options
so you cannot change the current home page.

3) Phishing

The hackers can steal your confidential information or personal information
using phishing techniques. Phishers will duplicate trusted websites
and ask you to enter your information. Many people are fooled using
this technique and many has suffered. Therefore, if you don't learn
how to protect your PC, you're risking your confidential information to
other people.

4) Spam

Spam is junk emails or bulk emails aimed to send advertisement
to your inbox. Sometimes, the emails will send virus in its attachment
or a link that will point you to download a virus or Trojan Horse.

5) Spyware

Spyware is software used by the advertisers to gain information
from you such as your browsing habit, which websites that you visited,
and it will send that information to certain people without you knowing.
It also can change your home page.

These are the 5 reasons why you should protect your PC. Leaving your
PC unprotected while using the Internet will make you vulnerable to
these threats. Learn how to protect your PC by reading articles, ebooks,
participate in tech forums and reading books. It can help you to
avoid these threats.

Want to learn more on PC safety? Visit http://www.chuangcomputer.com/pcsafety