^ I only recommended free ones -- cost is definitely a factor with software. It's a great time in software now because much of the best stuff is free to use. Maybe someday there will be a viable desktop alternative to Windows that is free.

Please no Linux flames. I love on it on the server, honestly

 

Popular Science or some computer magazine I read just did a review on 5 or 6 spyware programs (I dont think the Windows one was in there). They had Spybot ranked 1, and Ad-Aware (pay version) ranked 2. The others were good (better than nothing) but Spybot seems to be king, and its free.

Get FireFox as a browser. Its fast, a small footprint on the computer, open source, and pretty frickin secure. They have had problems and will in the future but its alot better than IE interms of pop-ups, add ons, and keeping those stupid frickin search bars out of my system.

 

if you have XP, and installed SP2, and use Windows Update, and you still have issues with pop-ups and spyware, I do not know how the hell you do it. You really need to look at the things you do and the sites you visit, as well as the security level of IE. If you want a "secure" browser, you have to keep IE security at "High," or "Medium" at the very least. Don't be retarded - if they are offering stolen property or "free" $$$$$$, what makes you think they will respect your privacy?

 

I mean no disrespect but this shows a lack of knowledge about where spyware is at this point and what most users know about computing in general. More accurately, the stuff that gets through is often really a virus since the programs often co opt the OS and/or abuse IE or Windows.

Popups and Javascript no longer get users to click. But now that popups don't work many spyware is tied to the onClick or onMouseOver events in the browser's DOM. Guess what? Now it's much harder for users to tell when something is legit. Popups are easy to spot and close, but when you click a link somewhere and get a dialog that looks like you need a new plug-in then many people (likely a small percentage, but still a lot of actual people) will click Yes or OK on the dialog box.

Spyware now comes in all kinds of flavors that look to most users as part of the operating system (remember, any click on any dialog will work for ActiveX to start running -- it doesn't have to be labeled correctly as an ad.) That's one of the problems of IE. At least in Firefox if you get a prompt you can be fairly certain if it's from FF or not and if it's likely to do any harm.

To address what sites you get spyware from -- it doesn't have to $$$$$$ and warez sites. Anyone that buys a typo URL, like googl.com, could throw up malicious code that tries to push spyware. Then anyone typing quickly and looking for the famous search engine could be exposed to the code. Like most sites with harmful code these get shut down quickly, but really it can be the luck of the draw as to whether or not you're exposed. I'd say plan that you will be and be ready for it when it happens.