free spyware removal tool

WOW!! THE SPYWARE STORY 
YOU DONT WANT TO READ!



The first sign of spyware trouble came when Marc Heatherington installed his personal firewall. Every few minutes, it warned him an application was sending Internet traffic. Initially, he ignored the warnings. Then his daughter noticed his browser launching new home pages, including xupiter.com. Worried that this was related to the outgoing traffic, Heatherington tracked down the offending DLLs, in a subdirectory labeled Xupiter. Web research told him he'd uncovered spyware—local software that surreptitiously tracks your behavior.


Xupiter is an advertising and marketing program that launches pop-up ads. It adds bookmarks to your browser's menu. And, as Heatherington discovered, it hijacks your browser's home page. More disturbing, to serve ads and sites tailored for you, Xupiter spyware transmits information about your PC and your surfing habits to xupiter.com; hence Heatherington's suspicious traffic.

None of the Heatheringtons remembered downloading Xupiter—unsurprising, because Xupiter is a "drive-by download." If your Internet security controls aren't properly set, just visiting a Web site or clicking on a Web ad can install an app.

Your PC may well be similarly infested. According to a recent report from research firm GartnerG2, more than 20 million people have installed adware applications (adware being a type of spyware that reports back on a subject's activities to serve up targeted advertising), and this covers only a portion of the spyware on the loose. Companies like DoubleClick use small files called cookies to track you online. Others, like WinWhatWhere, sell key loggers, which let others see your every keystroke. Trojan horses like Back Orifice and NetBus let hackers not only track your behavior but even take control of your PC.

As Marc Heatherington found, spyware can reach your PC without your knowledge or explicit approval. This is always the case with ad cookies, yet another spyware subclass. More worrying are applications like Xupiter that install themselves on the sly. Trojans and certain key loggers weasel onto your system in much the same way. Some may be mailed to you disguised as something useful. And of course, anyone with access to your machine can install a system monitor.

Josh Liberman—the president of Net Sciences, a New Mexico business networking company—constantly encounters spyware. "I have never sat down at a client PC and not been able to pull spyware off of it," he says. Though he typically finds 20 to 30 spyware-related files, folders, and Registry values, one system at an Albuquerque law firm yielded over 300.

In all likelihood, however, you willingly installed much of your spyware yourself when downloading another application. Most file-sharing services—Napster-like tools for trading MP3s and other files across the Internet—are bundled with spyware. That's how file-sharing vendors make money while not charging for their products. In a sense, you are paying, but the coin is privacy, not money.


The Grokster service, for example, includes Gator eWallet. This program seems innocuous. It can learn user names, passwords, credit card numbers, addresses, and so on, to help fill in online forms. But it sends information about you, your computer, and your online behavior to Gator's Web site.

Just how much privacy can spyware cost you?
With ad cookies from a company like DoubleClick, you may not have lost much, but there are circumstances in which cookies can be used against you (see our "Reader Surveillance Report"). Spyware like Xupiter and Gator eWallet is different. According to Xupiter's privacy policy, the company records more, including Web log information, IP addresses, browser type and versions, screen resolution, time zone, and version numbers of some software installed on your computer. Gator claims not to collect IP addresses, but it gathers "what software is on the personal computer," your "first name, country, and five-digit ZIP code," and more.


The added danger is that these companies will pass this information on. When you first read Xupiter's privacy policy, you might think the company closely guards the data it gathers. "Only employees of Xupiter and its licensor will be authorized to have access to this information," it says. But who are Xupiter's licensors?

The threat posed by key loggers, system monitors, and Trojans is even greater. A key logger can record anything you type, including your passwords, e-mail messages, real-time chats, and credit card numbers, and can even spy via Webcams attached to your PC. This information can be stored locally or silently sent out via e-mail.

Believe it or not, spyware isn't always illegal. State and federal antihacking statutes say that without a contract, no one is allowed to deploy this sort of software. With certain types of spyware, however—for example, file-sharing services like Grokster—you actually agree to a contract. There's a long list of "terms and conditions" you must accept on installation; by doing so, you give permission to install other apps, often including spyware. Of course, almost no one reads the contract.

Sometimes, you agree to a contract. DoubleClick, for example, doesn't explicitly ask to load its ad cookies, but its partner sites' privacy policies explain the process. Visiting those sites is tantamount to approving their cookies.

That best way to protect against spyware is to run an application that identifies and removes it. Here, we review nine software packages that sweep away everything from cookies to adware to Trojans. These tools operate much like antivirus software. Their developers have identified hundreds of spyware files, folders, and Registry keys and search for them on your hardware, offering to remove them when they turn up.

If you treasure your privacy, these tools are essential. Even if you locate spyware on your own, manually deleting it is difficult. Some spyware includes tricklers, which reinstall files as you delete them. An antispyware program is more likely to be able to eliminate the offenders.


Like virus developers, Internet spymasters race to stay ahead of removal products—successfully, it seems, for the moment. Not one product we tested here measured up to even the basic standard that antivirus apps must meet. Still, they help control the outward flow of information. And since many are free or offer free spyware scanners, we recommend you at least scan your system to find out what's really on your PC.


 AT LEAST DO THE FREE SPYWARE SCAN NOW!!!!