Spyware Information and Anti-Spyware Resources

Spyware: your worst nightmare

You think viruses, worms, and spam are bad? Spyware is worse... Spyware installs on your computer, without your knowledge and permission. Sometimes called adware, nastyware, crapware, scumware, and worse, it's all aggravating, and intrusive. It's enough to turn pacifists into violent activists. More...

What's The Difference Between
Spyware And Viruses?

How To Keep Spyware Off
Your Enterprise Network

Spyware is challenging spam and viruses for the top spot on IT worry lists. Spyware poses considerable threats and risks to enterprise networks and remediation and countermeasures are now being regarded as critical to network security. More...

The Spyware Money Trail

If you were ever curious who makes money from spyware, and how, find time to read Follow the Money; or, why does my computer keep getting infested with spyware?

Spyware websites

How can spyware websites continue to operate once they are discovered?

Once spyware infests a computer, its mission is to spy upon the PC user, or to redirect or force the user to visit an affiliate web site. A second and equally important goal for spyware is to evade detection, so that it can continue its primary mission. Several observations can be made from this behavior. More...

Identifying Spyware Processes on a Windows PC

Spyware can be downloaded from many locations, delivered in many packages, and installed in many locations on your PC. Spyware developers distribute new spyware and alter existing spyware constantly to evade your desktop and gateway antispyware defenses. No matter how many countermeasures you put in place, you can still fall victim to spyware. If you notice common spyware symptoms on your PC, don't be afraid to investigate. More...

Spyware Risk: It's Time to Get Smart

Many users vaguely understand the risks associated with having spyware secretly and maliciously installed on their computers. Fewer users know the many forms spyware takes and the truly evil activities it performs.

Read the rest of this column at Watchguard Technologies...

Spyware Remediation: It's
Not "Mission Impossible

Small and medium businesses are ripe targets for spyware, but they don't have to remain so. SMBs can implement an effective anti-spyware program on a shoe string budget. Adopt the practices recommended here, carefully select anti-spyware helpware, and you can mount a serious defense against spyware.

You call it spyware,
I call it lieware.

[Excerpted from Watchguard Wire]

"...the range of deceptive practices from spyware reach farther than most people realize. The difficulty with describing spyware is that what you can do once you 'own' someone's browser is pretty much a green field. More...

PC Pitstop Top 25 List

Most people who read my blog are familiar with the SANS Top 20 Vulnerability list. Trend Micro, Vexira, and in fact, most antivirus companies host lists of the current most prevalent malware. PC Pitstop hosts a similar list...More...

Deceptive 'Ads by Google'

Several companies are hijacking the good name of Spybot Search & Destroy with the text they use in Ads by Google. NoAdware uses "Spybot Search & Destroy ?" and "Free Spy Bot Scan" SpywareNuker uses "Search & Destroy Spybot". Check the URL in Ads by Google before you visit, and complain to Google.

When It Comes To Anti-Spyware Tools, Accuracy Is Key

How good is your anti-spyware? Can yours “detect 40,000 parasite definitions”? Can yours search for 53,248 spyware components?” Only 22, 984? Wimp! But wait, how can the wimp be rated fifth best out of 20 in a comparative review? What are we counting here? Are we all using base 10 arithmetic? More...

Anton Chuvakin on Spyware

Colleague Anton Chuvakin posted a solid and up to date article on spyware on O'Reilly's WindowsDevCenter website. In the article, Anton offers a good taxonomy of spyware and an equally good explanation of countermeasures and recovery procedures. Anton reiterates one piece of advice I routinely see in antispyware articles: More...

Shouldn't Antivirus and antispyware software
be the same 'ware?

Every network client must have antivirus software. We've been told so for years, and the message is finally sinking in. Concern over spyware is increasing so rapidly that I fully expect that antispyware, too, will be a prerequisite for network logon. More...

Legislation Won't Stall
The Spyware Juggernaut

Spyware has reached such epidemic proportions that lawmakers are responding to public outrage by drafting bills to prohibit its distribution, stem abusive practices and protect Internet user privacy. Unfortunately, pending and recently enacted anti-spyware laws are flawed and could do more harm than good. More...

Quantifying the Spyware Problem

StaySafeOnline hosts the results of an online safety study conducted by AOL and NCSA. The figures on spyware are staggering: over 88 per cent of users who agreed to have their systems scanned discovered spyware and, on average, users detected 93 pests per PC. More...

Microsoft's Antispyware Beta

Microsoft began offering free downloads of the beta version of the antispyware software they recently acquired (Giant). I'm a bit late to the review gate, but here's my anecdotal assessment.

PC World also reviewed the Beta.

Special Report: Putting Spyware In Front Of The Firing Squad

SecurityPipeline offers a package of articles on spyware (including two of mine) here...

The Top 5 Enterprise Antispyware Requirements

Good enterprise IT organizations appreciate the importance of orderly processes and centralized control. As they deploy currently available technology to combat spyware, enterprise IT departments have not lost sight of the requirements that will help integrate antispyware measures into standard desktop administration. More...

Malware Removal and Prevention

The folks at CastleCops have assembled a thoroughly impressive set of recommended practices for identifying and removing malware using freeware, and for keeping PCs clean following removal as well. It's disturbing that users must jump through so many hoops and perform so many time consuming tasks, but it's good to know there's a definitive and trustworthy source to help folks with limited budgets combat a nasty problem.