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A recent study conducted by AOL in conjunction with the National Security Alliance determined that, in a sample of 354 homes, over 61% of users had spyware loaded on their computers. Another study indicates that 83% of computers are infected with some form of spyware and 89% of affected consumers are unaware that they have spyware installed on their computers. Spyware can be devastating to both your privacy your computer system’s performance. The good new is, security software technology exists that can keep this threat from damaging your computer, sapping your productivity and exposing you to the threat of identity theft.

It can sometimes be difficult to tell if spyware or adware has been installed on your computer. A good rule of thumb is this: if you have not taken steps to actively prevent the installation of spyware on your computer, it’s likely that your system is infected. A few signs that your system is infected with spyware include:

1) You open the web browser on your computer and it opens to a different home page that the one you set.

2) Your system may have extra icons, or your browser may have extra toolbars that you did not install

3) Your web browser’s “Favorites” list contains web pages you did not put there

4) When web browsing you notice an unusual amount of pop-up ads, often unrelated to sites you are viewing

5) Your system takes longer to boot up, or just operates slower than normal.

This is how your system gets infected: while you are browsing sites on the Web, small computer programs are at work behind the scenes, gathering information about what you do, who you are, and who your friends are. These little programs gather this information and transmit it to a secret host somewhere on the network. On the other end of that connection, someone takes that information and uses it to send you spam email, or to send pop-up advertisements to your screen. Worse, they may be using the transmitted information to steal your identity!

This is spyware, at it could be the greatest threat to ever hit the Internet. In the less obtrusive form it is called adware, and it’s sent to your computer system, usually without you even knowing, as a part of some other program or utility. You may initially think that suffering through a few ads is a small price to pay for that neat new game or tool that you downloaded. Think again! You probably agreed to a license to download that neat new game, and it very likely allows the company that sent it to you to sell any information that they gather to third parties. And while they were installing that neat new game, they also installed other software onto your PC, which will compromise your system and devour network bandwidth as it transmits data back to the originators of the adware. Next thing you know, you are killing pop-up windows every ten seconds, your email inbox is filling up with spam and your system crashes way more than it ever did before!

Because they are stand-alone programs, adware and spyware can be designed to do pretty much anything on your computer. They can track your browsing habits. They can also examine the contents of your hard drive, copy files from them, change registry settings, change system files, steal passwords and even steal credit card numbers that are stored on your system.

Getting rid of spyware isn’t easy, since it comes into your PC through any one of a variety of techniques. Installing one of the new “anti-spyware” software packages is a start, but these single-point solutions won’t provide you with a comprehensive fix. Here are a few tips on how to keep spyware at bay:

1) Make sure that you kep your anti-spyware software up to date. Many spyware programs are identified and classified by anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. Fixes are published.

2) Install a URL filtering solution. Certain spyware applications launch automatically when certain web pages are visited – porn sites are notorious for containing spyware. URL filters will prevent yousers from accessing web sites that are likely to contain spyware.

3) Beware of email attachments. Spammers send out emails with attachments, attempting to trick you into clicking on them–but when you do, you get spyware.

4) Install and use firewall software to disable the delivery of the types of content to your system that are potentially spyware such as .exe, .vbs, Java or ActiveX applications.

5) Don’t use Instant Messaging or Peer-to-Peer (P2P) sharing programs, or if you do, be extremely cautious while doing so–always know ahead of time what you are downloading and who it is from. These types of programs, while convenient, often serve as a conduit for spyware.