Anti-Spy Advice Page

Spyware are files that are installed onto our computers when we install a seemingly harmless program (Gozilla! And Kazaa amongst others), these files are installed in the background without our knowledge or permission, these files then unknowingly send information about our system and internet usage to whomever, realistically they can send any information to anyone it is programmed to do so.

Some spyware has actually been reported to have the ability to download and install any program or files onto your system and/or copy files from your system without your knowledge.

Spyware passes the firewall with the permission of the program it was installed with, for example if you install Kazaa, which installs Cydoor spyware onto your system, then Cydoor uses Kazaa's internet permission to send info/data to its server, all this is done secretly in the background, so basically you are being tricked into giving these spyware programs access to the internet.

Spyware was first invented for advertising and research; it was like an automated survey. But these days it is exploited by hackers and others alike, to do what? We may never know, it could steel passwords and private files or basically anything it was programmed to do.

You can scan your computer for this spyware and get rid of it for good, Ad-Aware is my personal favourite, the basic version is totally free, but I would advise purchasing Ad-Aware Plus only because it comes with a nice little program called Ad-Watch which constantly monitors your system in the background for any new spyware that is installed. Also make sure you download free a charge RefUpdate, this is the program that will keep Ad-Aware up-to-date with new spyware as it comes out. Another good alternative I found is Spycop, download these from the download section.
you go to Tools-Internet Options-Privacy from here you can turn off some/all cookies or force it to ask you if you wish to allow cookies to be downloaded onto your computer for each individual internet site. Please note altering these settings, such as turning off all cookies can stop you accessing some internet pages that require cookies.

Alternativly you can use software such as Guard-IE which is an add-on for internet explorer, which logs how many cookies have been downloaded onto your computer and giving you the ability to delete them at will, but even better it can automatically delete them for you when you close down your browser.

Complete Cleanup is a program that can delete internet cookies of your choice, this software can do a lot more than just cookies, it can clean up your computers internet log files, your windows log and temp files and much more.

Evidence Eliminator is a program that can do all of the above and lots more, it is probably the most secure internet and PC cleanser available today, it uses the same technology as the U.S. military to delete any evidence of your activities on or off the internet permanently, so that no one can ever retrieve them.