Addware & How Your Machine Can Get Infected.

 

Part 1: Infection through shareware and changed security features

Common ways in which spyware can infect your machine is through shareware, and security exploits. These are both extremely common, and in many cases, the victim may not even know their computer is infected.

Shareware:

A common way in which spyware can get on your computer is through shareware programs, which are often downloaded through peer to peer networks. It is often downloaded with this kind of product, such as for example trading utilities. When you get this program on your computer and install it, you may also be infecting your computer with spyware bundled with the software.

Some companies manufacturing spyware and adware programs will even pay software developers to include their spyware with their software. Unfortunately, this is fairly common with freeware and shareware applications, and so you run the risk of getting spyware even if you're downloading a legitimate program.

In other cases, shareware gets the spyware incorporated into it by the spyware companies.  Here, the shareware developer may not even know their software is now bundled with spyware.

You’ve Changed Security Features:

Unfortunately, there are several ways in which spyware and adware can get downloaded and installed on your computer.  In some cases, it may get installed on your PC by altering your security settings.  It may even prompt you to do this without realizing what you are doing.

Fortunately, Internet Explorer’s web browser offers a number of built in notifications to the user of when something is trying to download onto your computer. This is available in later versions released by Microsoft. It is also able to detect when something is making a change to your system.  But, these can be manipulated by links on websites which the user is made to click.

As an example, take pop-up ads, which will often try to download spyware onto your computer.  Usually they happen when you visit websites, where a new window pops up with an advertisement.  In most cases, just by closing the ad, you are done.  But, there is a malicious kind that looks like Windows security boxes. Maybe you have seen them before.

Almost always, these windows security like pop-up ads will try to download spyware on your computer.  They look an awful lot like a standard dialog box providing you with information, which is why so many people fall for them and why spyware companies tend to use them so much.  You click on them, they change your security features and within a few minutes, you’ve got spyware to all over your machine.  This is not the kind of thing you want to happen.

One such dialog box offers to “optimize your internet access.” This is a typical type of windows security pop-up ad you'll see, because it is so effective. Then, even if you click “no”, the pop-up will still download the spyware onto your machine.

Another way spyware infiltrates your system is via security holes.  Security holes can exist either through your web browser (like internet explorer or firefox) or through a program you are using.  If you are browsing the internet and come across a site with a program like this, you can easily get infected with spyware, without even knowing about it.  This is often called a drive by download.