Well People

As one that checked his PC's HD many moons ago, when I just bought it, I can confirm that most PCs bought from the likes of PC World (I don't know the US equivalent) have spyware pre-installed.

However, because this junk is pre-installed Ad-Aware and Spybot cannot remove them, they see this rubbish as installed apps. The only way to clear this rubbish out is via manual deletion by visual inspection. Slow and cumbersome but the only effective way.

The first thing to do is look out for for unknown "exe" files that are not in your windows folder, then for each one you find google it to find out what it exactly does. If it has no legitimate purpose then delete it.

The next thing to watch out for is "send mail" files, you will be surprised at the number of these files scattered throughout your C:\ drive.

And finally, if you have a good firewall then use it to watch for applications requesting access to the Internet. Again, you will be surprised at the most unlikely of apps trying to sneak out while your doing other things, e.g. I caught Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) trying to access the Internet. If I had left my firewall in the default option I would not have known anything about it.

Be smart, be safe.


UK Bob