Weeding Out Spies
The term spyware covers a wide range of threats: nearly mainstream services that display ads, programs that co-opt search results, keyloggers that steal your passwords, even Trojan horses that open your system to hacking. But in two ways spyware is all the same – you didn’t knowingly ask for it, and it uses your system’s resources. Antispyware programs attempt to remove it or prevent it from installing in the first place. And spyware writers keep devising new tricks to avoid removal. Who’s winning?