Hi, it's Nick Bolton from MailWasher.
I hope MailWasher Pro is working well for you. Thanks for registering your copy. I'm sending you this newsletter to help you stay one step ahead of the scammers.
Lately, we've had quite a few MailWasher Pro and Benign users asking us about spyware - so I thought I might take a couple of minutes to tell you what spyware is and how you can protect yourself against it.
As usual, I'll try and stick to non-technical terms, but you might catch me occasionally slipping into tech-speak. I hope not.
Here goes ...
Spyware refers to a category of programs that illegally monitor your computer activity, often capturing and transmitting your personal information without your knowledge. In the process, they often cause your computer to become slow and unstable, and cause problems when you connect to the Internet.
Adware is legally installed software that tracks your online behaviour while you surf the Web. Some adware programs transmit this information to online advertisers, who can then target you with advertising based on your surfing habits.
Adware also includes cookies, which are small programs placed on your computer while you visit shopping sites. Cookies are normally harmless. Without them, e-commerce would be a tiring exercise in filling out forms every time you visited each site. If in doubt, read a site's privacy policy before you enter personally identifiable information at their web site.
Adware can send a record of the websites that you have visited.
Spyware is different. Some kinds of spyware called keyloggers can record all of your keystrokes and transmit them without your knowledge. This means that all of your passwords and credit card details can be compromised.
Apart from the disastrous effects of identity theft, spyware also causes numerous side-effects.
If you've noticed that your PC has become slow and unreliable, has trouble connecting and acts strangely when you're surfing the Internet, then it's likely you've got spyware on your system.
The slowness and unreliability comes from the spyware consuming your system's memory and processing power at the expense of the programs you actually want to run.
The strange behaviour when you're online can include your home page changing and your browser redirecting you to sites that you've never heard of, let alone wanted to visit. Often these are pornography, financial services, or pharmaceutical sites. In other words, the sort of things that spammers try to sell you!
Even more alarming is the emergence of stealth dialers. These are programs that, once placed on your machine, proceed to dial up premium-rate international phone numbers. You don't know they're there until you receive a gigantic, inexplicable phone bill at the end of the month!
In a recent survey by AOL, 80% of the users had some form of spyware or adware on their machines. Of these, 90% did not know about the infection and, even worse, didn't even know what spyware was!
For these reasons, spyware has replaced viruses as the number one security threat to PCs.
Popular free applications like music-sharing programs and even instant messaging software can come with spyware or adware bundled. If in doubt, don't install these programs.
Keep your web browser up-to-date with Microsoft's security patches by going to Microsoft's Update Page :
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
And make sure you NEVER click on links in spam messages, no matter how tempting it is! These links will often open sites that download spyware and hijack your browser.
You should install a personal firewall to stop spyware "phoning home" in the event that it does get onto your system. We recommend Outpost Pro but there are some good free firewalls around too.
Download a spyware detection and removal tool. I recommend that you select from the following list of products. They seem to have different strengths so use more than one of them.
Be very wary about downloading other spyware removal tools, because many 'anti-spyware products' actually install spyware of their own on your computer!
Read this recent PC World Magazine article for more details about fake spyware removal tools.
For further reading, visit these excellent anti-spyware resource sites :
I hope you've found this newsletter helpful. I'll write to you again next month with more tips on how to beat the spammers and scammers.
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