Spyware Checkers

'Spyware' is a class of software that gets installed on your Windows machines in all sorts of ways... including courtesy of whoever sold you your PC. You can delay installing spyware checkers until you have completed your re-install of Windows. Here's the description for one such piece of 'spyware':

Running Ad-aware and Spybot is optional. Your machine is 'safe' (not infected) without these being installed. If you are comfortable that someone is tracking what you do on your machine, then you can skip running these two programs. If you don't like this behavior, feel free to install the programs mentioned below and run them regularly (once a month). I ran these on my machines at home and while I have been very very careful, I still found 16 cases of 'low-risk' spyware.

There seem to be at least two freely available versions of spyware checkers that are popular, Ad-aware and Spybot. I'm told that neither finds everything, but together they do a good job. Both work similarly to virus scan programs in that they must get updates for the database of things to search for. Unlike virus scan software, these programs do not run all the time, but rather you must remember to invoke them once in a while.

Ad-aware

This software is available from http://www.lavasoftusa.com. Their simplest version of Ad-aware is free for personal use. They offer more automated versions for sale. The install is pretty normal. Once you start the program, you must first click on 'Check for updates'.

• Start the program (from desktop icon or from Start and then Programs etc.)
• Click 'Check for Updates Now' (right above the button near the bottom of the screen). This goes to the Net to get some files that are regularly changed.
• Press Start
• The default is to do a 'smart scan' (probably what you want to do). Press 'Next' and the scan begins.
• When it's done you'll see a list of things (objects) it found. Double clicking on these will give you a little summary of what is known about them. Check each you want removed (probably all of them).
• Press 'Next' and a popup asks if you want to remove the offending items. They are saved somewhere so they can be restored.

SpyBot Search & Destroy

This software is available from http://www.safer-networking.org/. The install is pretty normal. It's behavior is much like Ad-aware, but I find the interface less obvious. One nice feature is that it is aware of Ad-aware so it does not trip over things Ad-aware finds (see here).

• Start the program (from desktop icon or from Start and then Programs etc.)
• Click 'Search for Updates' which goes out on the Net and updates things. The program might disappear and then restart.
• Press 'Check for Problems' which starts the scan
• When it's done you'll see a list of things (already checked). Click on each of these to see a very nicely done explanation of what they are about. Uncheck any you do NOT want removed (not likely to be the case).
• Press 'Fix selected problems' at the very bottom of the screen (this is not exactly obvious) and you get a popup that asks if you want to remove the offending items.

These two programs will not run themselves automatically. You need to remember to run them every once in a while. You'll have other maintenance things to do regularly and these scans could just be another thing to do.