Unless you’ve been on another planet for the last five or six years you have surely heard of Spyware and I would hope you are taking precautions against your PC being infected. But do you know that the precautions you take may be ineffective in protecting your PC? Here are my Top Ten Facts about Spyware – some of them may shock you!
1. The average home PC contains 30 pieces of spyware according to an audit carried out in 2006 by security company Webroot Software. The type of infections range from the relatively harmless adware programs to malicious system monitors and trojan horses. Adware programs are software installations that display advertisements. System monitors are much more malicious and track a computer user’s Internet activity and capture personal information. Trojan Horse is the name given to malicious software which, although harmless itself, opens the way for more malicious software to be installed. Webroot Software found that, on average, the 30 pieces of spyware would contain at least 1 system monitor and 1 trojan horse.
2. Your identity can be a few mouse clicks away for criminals. Spyware can gather and report all the personal...