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Coming up with online sources for her law school thesis on money laundering was a task that was made simpler for a certain student with the help of Google. This easy tool was extremely useful to the student in her writing process. A couple months after beginning her project, the student became distressed to discover that her trusty search engine began leading her to a web page unrelated to money laundering.

Her hopes of it being an easy to repair problem with the internet or the search engine were dashed as the glitch refused to go away, and she was forced to concede that she had likely been bugged. Despite being annoying, when the bugging comes from a human, it can be gotten rid of. Adware and spyware, the computer bugs that infected the law school student’s computer, are not as easy to get rid of as human bugs. The law school student was definitely not an advanced student of technology, as she typically only used her computer for school related purposes of research and writing.

Seemingly complex computer problems that boggle the minds of most computer uses, like the law student, can typically be summed up with the words spyware and adware. In 2000, the word ’spyware,’ which had been around since 1995, became a fixture in most people’s computer dialogue. Personal information is infiltrated in this method, using either a software or script that allows another person access to the computer.

This is done by studying logging keystrokes, web browsing history and even scanning a user’s hard drive. Though spyware employs the kind of methodology that sounds like it came out of a James Bond movie, anyone can be a victim. It is not an exaggeration to call the people affected by spyware victims because nobody wants their internet activities to be monitored without their consent. Admittedly spyware has beneficial uses such as allowing the tracking of criminals, but those potential uses are frequently ignored as crooks use the program for their own criminal activities, such as stealing credit card information. Because of the hostile nature of these potential infiltrations, every computer should have an updated anti-spyware program.

In attempting to protect yourself, you should block not only spyware, but adware and malware, which are similar programs, as well. Spyware and adware blocker programs can be obtained online. These programs both remove and disable existing bugs and help prevent the future installation of similar malicious software.

Conclusion

Thankfully, spyware, adware and malware do not self replicate the way that viruses and worms do, but they can cause similar malfunction in the day to day usage of computer activities. Slowing the computer down to a crawl is one of the nastier side effects of these malicious programs. Unfortunately for many computer owners, spyware programs can and do hide on their systems, causing havoc while being undetectable as the root of the problem. Knowing the immense damage these types of program can do, having a blocker to prevent them from setting up home on your system should be common sense.