Beware Of Spyware Threats – The Top Ten

“Know your enemy, if you want to conquer him”. This is a well known phrase that you should be aware to the spyware threats. Spyware can cause innumerable problems, like quietly spying upon your surfing habits, pass on your credit card information to the bad elements or simply be a nuisance to your computer operation. In all cases, it pays to know your enemy and hence you should have enough prior knowledge of them to combat them. Here is a list of the top ten spyware threats as sourced from Face Time Security Labs.

1. Gator – Gator is installed by users as a password tomb. That means the passwords can be recalled for you automatically when visiting sites. The trade-off for this spyware advantage is that you have to undergo pop-ups when visiting certain sites. Claria, the maker of Gator,has cleaned up its act a little by category the pop-up ads, but they’re still maddening.

2. CoolWebSearch – This is a spyware which when it gets installed, will be highly notorious as it will simply hijack your browser. CoolWebSearch is the generic name given to the variants of the spyware which redirects the user to coolwebsearch.com or datanotary.com. Any attempt to uninstall the programme will prove to be a highly complex exercise. Hence you should not attempt to remove this programme manually from your disc.

180SearchAssistant is another one of those pranksters that is bent on offering you pop ups of sites resembling your search keyword. Emoticons and wallpaper come as addition gift wraps along with this software. Newer version, however, offer some respite with their add/remove program and uninstall features.

4. Huntbar – Another piece of annoying software, Hunthar, manages to install a toolbar in both your internet explorer and windows explorer windows. It will also change your home page and settings for search to redirect you to their own search engine. This can be highly annoying and also consume an exorbitant memory space of over 15%.

5. Cydoor – When you get a P2P, that is , peer to peer software, you may also get Cydoor along. This software also pops up number of advertisements with great annoying effect. It will also track usage information from your machine.

ISTbar sticks to your system through install ActiveX and javascript. It’s as easy as visiting a site and you have a brand new program called ISTbar. It’s extremely dangerous as it siphons off the information to my-internet.info and Blazefind.com.

7. WhenU-DesktopBar –This software keeps displaying advertising contents. It will also monitor your internet traffic and spy on your search profiles. It can also execute remote codes from an outside server through its update feature that can cause harm to your computer.

New.net must be exterminated without a blink of an eye. It specialises in selling non-standard top domain names.

IEplugin is harmful to your privacy to say the least. It installs a tool bar onto the browser and tracks all the activities on the internet.

BargainBuddy was once an infamous and ubiquitous program. Distributed by BullzEye Network, it would set up browser Helper Object to keep an eye on the system. It would study the keywords being used and would send advertisement your way based on that.