Beware of spyware

Hi. I'm Wayne Cunningham, the senior editor with CNET Download.com. Today, I'm going to tell you a little bit about spyware.

Spyware vendors push ads from the Internet to your computer, turning it effectively into a billboard. How do they get this spyware on your computer? This happens in various fashions. One way is the drive way. When you are browsing the Web, you go to a Web page. It may have an ActiveX control installed in it. That ActiveX control in turn downloads an EXE file. EXE file is the actual spyware, which will pull the ads to your computer. Spyware gets its hooks deep into your computer, getting into your registry file, getting into folders and even getting into your Windows system folder. The worst spyware actually can reinstall itself once you try to remove it and even disable your spyware remover.

Now it's important always to have a good spyware remover with the spyware threats out there. Good choices are Ad-Aware and Spyware Doctor. You can also prevent the ActiveX controls from getting onto your computer by using Firefox instead of IE. Of course, if your computer gets badly infected, sometimes all you can do is wipe out your entire system and start out all over again.