Anti-Spyware- What Is It And Why Do You Need It?

The Internet is not a safe place any more. Among the newly emerging threats, spyware is easily considered a user's worst nightmare. It is designed to steal crucial information from your PC. Anti-spyware is meant to detect and remove spyware from your computer and make sure that it does not enter your computer again. You can find both- free and paid anti-spyware tools.

Going by the definition of spyware, it is marked to be any tool which installs on your computer without your explicit knowledge and steals information from your computer and sends it back to someone else. In most cases, spyware also displays unwanted advertisements on your computer but its main job is to steal information.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive spyware definition. As the computer technologies advance, the nature of spyware also keeps on changing. New types of spyware tools emerge and older ones are morphed to look as legitimate applications. The most common practices by which spyware installs itself on your computer is either piggybacking a legit application or installing itself as a drive by download.

The first case is where spyware attaches itself to any clean application you download and install. Since the spyware poses as a part of the application, most people do not think of it as spyware but as an essential part of the software they are installing. This means that technically the spyware comes in the computer with user's permission but this permission is obtained in the wrong way.

The second case is that of a drive by download. This is a bit more technical way. In this case, the person who wants to install spyware on user's computers creates a specially crafted web page that can take advantage of the browser's vulnerabilities. In this case, no download and install on user's part is required. Instead, the entire thing takes place on its own.

Antispyware comes with two special features which allow you to remain safe from these malicious software. These features are a resident scanner and an automatic update feature. The latter is a special system by which the anti-spyware vendor updates the spyware signature database of anti-spyware. The software uses these signatures to check if any spyware is present on the computer.

The former feature works on the principal of Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR). Using this principle, the anti-spyware tool remains active in the background and keeps an eye on all the activity that is going on. In case the anti-spyware finds anything suspicious, it would report the activity to you and ask you what you want to do. If you are careful about the data on your computer having an anti-spyware is a must for you.