If you so much as remotely glance at computer articles on the
Internet, chances are you have an idea what spyware is. It's that
nasty software that hides within your system to bring you twenty
times the popups, a 30% reduction in system speed, and 500 times
the headaches that Windows alone will give you.
But you use a Mac, right?
Thankfully, there doesn't seem to be any spyware out there for
the Mac right now. If you don't happen to use a Mac, or if you've
got a PC as well, you might have a bit more trouble. It seems like
almost everywhere you go on the Internet, your PC is susceptible to
being infected by these nasty, virus-like programs that render your
computer almost as useless as, well, Windows 1.1.
I'd love to tell you that there's an easy way to get rid of
them, but unfortunately that's not the case. While there are tools
like Ad-Aware
and Spybot,
they simply don't remove everything. I recently had a major spyware
infection on my PC, and I had to actually start up in safe mode
(similar to booting a Mac with the extensions off) and remove the
infected files myself. And you'll just love to know that often they
take the names of some "official-sounding" software. Something
named WindUpdate.exe could be watching every move that you make, on
your own computer.
But you've got a Macintosh, so you don't need to worry. Or do
you?
Security Updates
Right now it seems that virus and spyware writers are more
interested in people with unupdated Windows PCs. There's nothing
they love to see more than someone running, say, Windows 98, with
absolutely no security updates installed. And for many Windows
users, that's the case.
On your Mac, however, OS 9 really has no security updates, and
if that's what you're running, you shouldn't have to worry. Virus
and spyware authors couldn't care less about the classic Mac OS
these days, since it's only going to decrease in popularity as
people replace their hardware with new G4 and G5 machines preloaded
with OS X.
Mac OS X, however, has security updates, and I'd recommend that
you install them. While the Mac user base is relatively small,
there is a chance that spyware authors will realize the potential
for spreading their evil software throughout the Macintosh-using
community as well. Keeping up with security updates and system
patches is a good idea.
Apple has released several security updates recently.
Cookies
Now, how about some cookies? Unfortunately, these kinds of
cookies aren't edible, and they can be potentially harmful as well.
If you have a PC or have a friend with a PC, run a Spybot scan of
the system, and it's guaranteed to have at least one "nasty"
cookie. Spybot lets you view privacy policies of the companies that
distribute these, and I recommend that you read some of them.
While they're often relatively harmless, only giving out
information that you supply them, occasionally they can be quite
bad. Some of them collect any personally identifiable information
that they can find and follow your every move on the Web. The bad
part about all this is that it's not just PC users who are
affected. Mac users can get these things, too, so it's a good idea
once in a while to browse the contents of your cookies folder,
deleting things relating to advertising, since this is what most
frequently collects information.
Of course, it's pointless to waste every moment of your time
trying to find and delete things that you're not even sure are
present in the first place. If advertising companies want to see
what websites I visit, let them. If they really care that I spent a
half hour at the BBC
News website, 25 minutes at Low End Mac, 45 minutes at eBay, and
35 minutes searching Google for tools to remove
spyware and cookies, that's their business.
Editor's note: As an occasional Windows user, I've been very
happy with the free adware and spyware scanner included with the
latest beta of the Yahoo
toolbar. The only sad thing is that you have to launch
Internet Explorer to use it, as Yahoo doesn't yet support the more
secure, more robust Mozilla family of browsers.
dk
