more computer disease prevention

even more insidious that virus infections are spyware and adware. do yourself a favor and download and USE these two programs on a regular basis.

ad-aware (not ada-ware)
spybot search and destroy

both of these programs can be found at www.download.com or you can find ad-aware at www.lavasoft.de or spybot at www.spybot.info/en/index.html

when looking for spybot on download.com - search for “spybot” and READ THE LISTING - don’t just go download the first thing you see - look for “spybot search & destroy” - there are other “spybot” posers that are actually spyware in and of themselves.

never install spyware that requires that you pay to get the full version. there’s just no sense in it. instead, use these two FREE programs and make a donation to the programmers!

install these programs, update them, then RUN THEM and run them regularly, ESPECIALLY if you frequently surf aimlessly, visit any open diary or online journal site, use any peer-to-peer software-sharing programs, or visit any site that gives away free downloads.

also, odd as it sounds, if you want to kill pop-ups (another source of spyware), the best prevention i’ve found, in that it reliably works, has been in the form of the free google toolbar. also the free alexa tool bar popup blocker works excellently as well, however alexa is amazon.com’s own adware and supposedly tracks a lot of into that you simply can’t turn off (like values that you type into forms). i’ve use norton’s internet tools pop up blocker and it sucks. i’ve been much more happy with alexa and google toolbar pop-up blockers.

there is a potential problem in using these combinations that you should be aware of - since the alexa tool bar is defined as spyware by spybot and ad-aware, they will both tr to remove it. on an XP system, if you allow spybot to “fix” the alexa entries, it will mess up your browser until you re-install the alexa toolbar. if you want to get rid of the alexa tool bar, use it’s included “uninstall” feature.