Spyware

Last night this computer just kept crashing. I would open up a list of e-mails, see them, click on one, and CRASH. Open up a different browser, open up a web page, and CRASH. It wasn't even very hot in the room.

Finally I decided to run AdAware, the free Spyware/Adware detector from Lavasoft.

It took a while to load. Apparently, it had been over a month since I had last run it, and I needed to get new updates. (Updates are usually posted once a week.) The updates took a while to load. Once I had them I cleared my IE cache, deleted any remaining Temporary Internet Files, and did a "deep scan." An hour and some 159,777 scanned items later, it came back with the result: 78 instances of Spyware and Adware found, some with hundreds of "hits".

I deleted these 78 items and, on a whim, logged back on to the Internet. I checked out a few innocuous sites, sites that I routinely visit each day and that I wouldn't suspect of harboring any malicious programs that would slow down and spy on my computer. Performance was good, and I didn't crash once. After a half hour or so I logged back off and did a "smart scan", which only took a few minutes and only scanned 65,332 items. There were six new items of Spyware and/or Adware.

So now I am going to integrate running AdAware into my daily routine. I don't know if the items it detected were responsible for my performance issues and frequent crashes, but I do know that I'm happy to have them off my computer.