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. As you can imagine, this was definitely a great tool to her in the process of writing her thesis. Soon, she began to have the problem of her search terms taking her to pages completely 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. We all hate bugging people us but people we can fend of. What this law student is confronted with is a computer bug that she cannot fend off: she had been infected with adware and spyware programs. The student does not have advanced technology training and like most average students, she uses her laptop only for basic research and the writing of her papers.
The case above is eerily similar to that of an increasing number of individuals who find their computers malfunctioning after being infected with spyware and adware. In 1995, 'spyware' premiered as a phrase to describe an especially nasty type of computer infection, and that term gained increased popularity in 2000. Unbeknownst to many users, these software programs and scripts that comprise this particular computer bug allow access to personal information about the computer user.
Keystrokes, browsing history, and the contents of a hard drive all provide this valuable information. With the advent of spyware, infiltration moved off the big screen of Hollywood movies and into the homes of millions of unsuspecting individuals that can be taken advantage of at any time. Infiltrations such as these are basic privacy violations and the people targeted are indeed innocent victims. Spying on criminals with spyware makes sense because it can help society for the greater good, but too often this program is used to track sensitive personal information, such as 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. Online adware and spyware blocker programs are easily available to help in this endeavor. By not only eliminating the current infiltration programs on a computer system, but by preventing any future ones to be unknowingly installed, these blockers live up to their name. Both the individual programs and the computer itself can experience a drastic decline in speed after the computer has been infected with these programs.
Sadly, many times spyware is such a good 'spy' that it can evade detection as the root of the crime. The best step is always a good offense, in this case a blocker, to prevent your system from becoming infected with the malicious programs.
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