T2W Trading Community

Spyware

Sometimes called Adware, this is a generic term for any program that monitors a user's activity. Again, like viruses, they can be quite harmless or cause a great many problems. Sometimes, the same form of spyware will have one effect on one machine, and another effect on another. There are no hard and fast rules, except for the one about getting rid of them from your system.

The most harmless form of spyware is probably the tracking cookie. This is a piece of code placed on your computer by your web browser and used by a website to record information about you. Some cookies, such as the ones Trade2Win uses, can - at your request - remember such details as your username and password, logging you in automatically whenever you return. Others are can record the kind of sites that you visit for demographic purposes - i.e. visitors to site "a" also visit sites "d", "k" and "m".

Other types of spyware can be more malicious, particularly those that incorporate ActiveX script. ActiveX is a technology developed by Microsoft to enable web pages to behave like programs - the exploitable element of this being that they can install programs onto your PC without your knowledge. Microsoft have gone some way to fixing this with the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Some browsers are more susceptible to Spyware than others. The most popular browser, Internet Explorer (with around 90% of the marketplace) ships as default on all Windows-equipped machines and as such is the browser most regularly targeted by Spyware developers. Other browsers, such is Mozilla Firefox, an open source browser, offers enhanced security over IE but at occasional small expense, in that not all websites are yet Mozilla compatible, but they'll typically tell you so (or you'll realize when you visit the site).

The next version of Internet Explorer, IE7, rumoured to be with us in beta format later in 2005, is going to be primarily focused on security, which suggests that Microsoft is well aware all is not well with IE6 - a feeling backed up by the numbers of users switching to products like Mozilla.

Some of the more popular free and pay-for solutions are listed below. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, and it is worth reading the various reviews available on the web and in PC magazines. Some anti-spyware programs perform poorly, and others will even install spyware on your machine - read about it here.

Free Anti-Spyware Programs

• Microsoft AntiSpyware (Beta Version until July '05, Win XP only)
• Ad-Aware
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• Spyware Blaster

Pay Spyware Programs

• Pest Patrol

Like Viruses, make sure that whatever Spyware solution you choose is kept regularly updated. Most, if not all, will prompt you for updates when you run them. However, unlike AV products, you can run more than one instance of anti-spyware products on your machine, as no one solution has yet been found that is a catch-all.