CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [465]
You can also install spyware detection and removal software on your system and run it regularly. Let’s look at how to do that.
Some spyware makers are reputable enough to include a routine for uninstalling their software. Gator, for instance, makes it fairly easy to get rid of their programs; just use the Windows Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Others, however, aren’t quite so cooperative. In fact, because spyware is so—well, sneaky—it’s entirely possible that your system already has some installed that you don’t even know about. How do you find out?
Windows comes with Windows Defender, a fine tool for catching most spyware, but it’s not perfect. The better solution is to back up Windows Defender with a second spyware removal program. There are several on the market, but two that I highly recommend are Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware (Figure 26-17) and PepiMK’s Spybot Search & Destroy.
Figure 26-17 Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware
Both of these applications work exactly as advertised. They detect and delete spyware of all sorts—hidden files and folders, cookies, Registry keys and values, you name it. Ad-Aware is free for personal use, while Spybot Search & Destroy is shareware (Figure 26-18). Many times I’ve used both programs at the same time because one tends to catch what the other misses.
Spam
E-mail that comes into your Inbox from a source that’s not a friend, family member, or colleague, and that you didn’t ask for, can create huge problems for your computer and you. This unsolicited e-mail, called spam, accounts for a huge percentage of traffic on the Internet. Spam comes in many flavors, from legitimate businesses trying to sell you products to scammers who just want to take your money. Hoaxes, pornography, and get-rich-quick schemes pour into the Inboxes of most e-mail users. They waste your time and can easily offend.
You can use several options to cope with the flood of spam. The first option is defense. Never post your e-mail address on the Internet. One study tested this theory and found that over 97 percent of the spam received during the study went to e-mail addresses they had posted on the public Internet.
Filters and filtering software can block spam at your mail server and at your computer. AOL implemented blocking schemes in 2004, for example, that dropped the average spam received by its subscribers by a large percentage, perhaps as much as 50 percent. You can set most e-mail programs to block e-mail from specific people—good to use if someone is harassing you—or to specific people. You can block by subject line or keywords. Most people use a third-party anti-spam program instead of using the filters in their e-mail program.
Figure 26-18 Spybot Search & Destroy
Viruses
Just as a biological virus gets passed from person to person, a computer virus is a piece of malicious software that gets passed from computer to computer (Figure 26-19). A computer virus is designed to attach itself to a program on your computer. It could be your e-mail program, your word processor, or even a game. Whenever you use the infected program, the virus goes into action and does whatever it was designed to do. It can wipe out your e-mail or even erase your entire hard drive! Viruses are also sometimes used to steal information or send spam e-mails to everyone in your address book.
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EXAM TIP Be sure to know the difference between viruses and spyware. Too many people use the terms interchangeably, and they’re very different things.
Trojans
Trojans are true, freestanding programs that do something other than what the person who runs the program thinks they will do, much as the Trojan