Have you ever had a time where the computer will start to slow down, even though you purchased a fast computer? The problem might be that your computer has spyware on it. What is spyware? There are several categories: Cookies just hold temporary informationsuch as the items in your shopping cart when you go to a vendor such as Amazon.com. They are usually OK to leave, but some vendors are sloppy and leave things such as your credit card information in cookies, where if the cookie is improperly registered it might be read by another site. Data-mining software tracks surfing habits websites you have visited and makes that information available to whatever website installed the spyware. This information is then sold to advertisers who match your computers address or your e-mail address to advertising that they then put in banner ads, or e-mail to you. Spyware is often hidden inside of free applications or utilities that offer to do something nicesuch as keep your system clock synchronized with the naval observatory, or put a fun cursor on your machine. In many cases it is installed in secret, with no uninstall capability. Things get really messy when you have more than one spyware program running at the same timethey get so busy fighting each other that your computer has no time left for your work. Ad-Aware is a free program that you can download from www.lavasoft.de and it will help get spyware out of your computer. After downloading the program, close any programs that you are running (this helps it run faster) and start Ad-Aware. Once you open the program, click Start. If you have multiple drives, click Customize, then select Drives and Folders. Put a check mark next to those drives you wanted check then click Proceed on both windows that popped up. Then click Next and it will begin scanning. For large disks with many files, it might take an hour or more to do a complete scan. When it is finished scanning, you should hear a sound showing that has completed the scan. Click next and will show you a list of what it found. I like to just check all of the boxes off. You must checkmark everything in order to delete them. Then click next and a prompt will come up and you will say yes. Ad-Aware removes them from your computer such that they wont run by putting them into a quarantine area. This is so that if you remove something that you later decide that you want to keep (such as a PIN cookie for the book-of-the-month-club) you may restore it. To completely remove a cookie file or bad application, select the item, and click delete or press the delete key on your keyboard. The harmful stuff is gone. I recommend that you run Ad-Aware once or twice a month or every week (whatever is good for you). With this program, you will be able to make your computer safe and healthy. If you purchase Ad-Aware Plus or Ad-Aware Professional, it runs in real time in a manner similar to an anti-virus program. Visit the LavaSoft site for more information. |
Scott Preston is the Technology Administrator at the Ridgefield Boys and Girls Club www.rbgclub.com. He is the son of Bruce Preston, leader of Random Access and the Access Sig. |
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