You have often heard the terms "spyware" or "malware" in the
media. They're omnipresent; not a single day can pass
without a new spyware report, without at least a newspaper
accounting for some serious damage due to such a program and
so on. But have you ever wondered how harmful spyware
actually is? How serious is its threat? How exposed are you?
Let us look at the first question first. How exposed are
you? Most users quietly assume that spyware is not as
serious as it sounds: if you just stay away from malicious
websites, there shouldn't be any problems, right?
Actually, the answer is two-fold. On one hand, it's true
that the largest gateway used by spyware programs are indeed
malicious websites. This is really an umbrella term, these
websites don't do anything per se, but they do offer
malicious programs for download or in some extreme cases,
offer to install malicious browser add-ons.
On the other hand, these websites are far from being the
only ways spyware can get on your computer. You can also
receive spyware by e-mail, if the program's author wrote it
like a Trojan. Spyware can get on your computer by
exploiting vulnerabilities in your operating system, if it
was built like a worm and in this case, you are exposed.
There is no 100% effective way to make sure that your
computer will not be infected by spyware. The reason for
this is that spyware can be installed on your computer just
like any other program. For a computer, a spyware program
looks like any other program. In order to discern between a
legitimate one and a malicious one, the program's code
itself has to be analyzed. Unfortunately, this is largely
impossible to do on-the-fly, not without causing major
annoyances for the user.
As a consequence, most users prefer to adopt a defensive,
but fairly liberal posture when it comes to protecting their
computer against infection. However, if they are willing to
occasionally make compromises when preventing infection,
they will rarely make compromises when treating infections.
Employing a powerful anti-spyware program, like
XoftSpySE
for example, is a sure way to keep your computer clean.
Half of the question has been answered so far, but what
about the other half? Is spyware really that harmful? What
can it do that makes software companies employ huge resources to combat it?
Again, the answer is two-fold. On one hand, we should begin
by noting that most spyware is, essentially, harmless. By
'harmless', we are referring to the fact that they do not
have a perceptibly negative impact in the long-term. Sure,
they do display very annoying ads (maybe less annoying since
they are often related to a user's interest, but
nevertheless, they are unwelcome), and some of them bring
other friends along, but this is not something to be
concerned with. Just use your favorite anti-spyware tool to
remove them, and you're done.
On the other hand, if most spyware is essentially harmless,
there are some rogues out there. These are the truly
dangerous programs, which steal really sensible data. For
instance, a browser add-on which monitors your search
strings is not too harmful. But such an add-on can easily be
adapted to monitor your passwords. If you use web-based
e-mail, e-banking or e-finance solutions, chances are you do
not want such a program around.
How common are these programs? Not too common but this is
not all good news, because 'rarely encountered'
also means 'rarely detected'. Such powerful programs usually
have extremely robust avoidance schemes, managing to escape
the detection of even the most advanced anti-spyware
programs.
The only way to reliably detect such programs is to use very
advanced, continuously improved detection algorithms, so as
to stay one step ahead their ability to escape detection.
Most experts agree that the winner in this game is
XoftSpySE, which employs some very original detection methods.
Indeed, since some of the detection schemes are
non-conventional, many advanced spyware programs cannot
escape detection.
If we were to sum our findings in a single phrase, we could
say that spyware is usually harmless, but potentially very
dangerous. The potential dangers go all the way to identity
theft, in fact there have been some spyware-based
identity thefts reported. As a consequence, using an
advanced anti-spyware program to regularly scan your
computer is a must, regardless of how sane your browsing
habits are.
