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Common Problems Why Hard Disks Crash
There are so many reasons why your hard disk may crashed: (1) It may be caused by mechanical or physical problem such as the spindle motor system failure. This failure is usually caused by over-heating. The activity light flashing that you...

From Spyware with love!
Its late. You've been scouring the web for that perfect present for your Aunt Bess in Idaho. You finally find it at presents4aunties.com. The site looks a lil rough on the edges, weird colors and such. But they have that gift you know will make Aunt...

How to Become Famous for Becoming Famous
If the name Walt F.J. Goodridge isn't yet a household name, chances are it soon will be. That is, if a Jamaican-born, former civil-engineer turned self-help guru with aspirations of stardom is successful in his bid to achieve national fame in 365...

See How To Troubleshoot PC Mouse Problems Fast
The Motherboard is the largest component in your PC and the Central Processing Unit is its brain.But when your input devices go on the blink,you're shut down for awhile.When Computer Mice problems come,we don't panic as fast when we cannot access...

The Coming Television Revolution
The revolution is just getting started and will begin to make its mark this year. By 2010, it will begin to take off. By 2025, it will be the standard for all TV viewing. It's called Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV for short. IPTV works...

 
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Protecting Your Computer from Adware and Spyware

Recently, while checking our company web site statistics, we noticed a number of referrals from gambling and pornography sites. Since we are certain these types of sites would not house links to us, we investigated further and determined that some of our faithful visitors may be the victims of adware or spyware.

What is adware?

Adware, in it's most sinister incarnation, is a program that runs on your computer (like a virus) and occassionally pops up ads or redirects your browser to websites you had not chosen to visit.

What is spyware?

Spyware is software that collects personal information from you without your knowledge or permission. The information spyware collects can range from all the web sites you visit to sensitive information including user names and passwords.

How can I make sure I don't get these on my computer?

* Never download programs or files from a website you don't know and trust.
* Never open email


attachments unless you know what they are. If you receive an email from a friend, but the text is strange and you don't know what the attachment is do not open it. Write to your friend and make sure they sent the email.
* Keep an antivirus program running on your computer at all times. You may also want to download Microsoft's Spyware program which can be found free here: http://www.microsoft.com/
More comprehensive articles on adware and spyware may be found here:

http://cexx.org/problem.htm
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/malware.ars?72460
http://www.adware.info/


About the Author

An authority on integrated web databases, Amanda Huber is co-owner of Vulcan Creative Labs, LLC (www.vulcancreative.com) and DeadFred.com, an online genealogy photo archive. She occasionally contributes articles for Dead Fred's e-newsletter Relatively Speaking which help genealogy researchers with more technical aspects of their online tasks.