What is Spyware?

When people talk about viruses and dangerous things that you can download online, there is no doubt that the word “Spyware” is often mentioned. While its very name already hints at its actions, many people are unaware about exactly what spyware does and how it can adversely affect you and your computer.

Spyware can come in many forms, but at the base of spyware is a small computer program that is usually installed without the user’s knowledge. That program often has its own masking ability, so even though your computer knows it is there, it often does not show up in a list of the “installed programs” making it very hard for a user to get rid of it.

Most of the time this program gets installed when someone either downloads a .exe file from the Internet that had the spyware attached (so that you gave permission to your computer to install some program only to have other spyware program installed with it), or because you accidentally visited a less-than-trustworthy website that installed it automatically.

Spyware itself is not always “dangerous” in the sense that it may not do anything to your personal data that can cause you any harm in the future. In fact, many forms of spyware only record buying and browsing habits of the user in order to take advantage of that data for their own purposes. While they do this without your knowledge, this data is not anything too damaging.

However, some of spyware are far more dangerous. There is spyware that will record keystrokes in order to keep track of your personal passwords, credit cards and other personal information. There is also spyware that takes that information and sells it to others, which is one of the leading causes of identity theft.

All spyware is bad for you and your computer. Even when the spyware is as “harmless” as the data collection programs, it is still recording personal information that can someday be used to exploit you and your buying habits. In addition, all spyware causes your computer to stop performing as well as it had been performing because multiple programs are active at the same time, and it often slows down your Internet speed as well because multiple programs are accessing the Internet, even when you are not surfing the web.

For these reasons, when you have spyware on your computer you want to do whatever you can to remove it. Because spyware is so harmful, there are many companies that have researched all of the spyware currently found online and removes them using their own unique techniques.

If you have not reformatted your computer for a while, downloaded anything suspicious on the Internet or you have found that your computer or Internet access seem to be much slower than they had been previously despite not having many programs open, there is a strong chance that you have some form of spyware on your computer that needs to be removed before any important information has been given to predators.