SpyWare - Removal

An awareness of adware is not enough to protect a user-proactive steps must be taken. The first step is to check the current computer configuration to discover if any adware products are installed. Many utilities are available to counter the marketing, hacking, and monitoring activities but one product that is highly pushed and repeatedly recommended is Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com).

Ad-Aware is currently being supported on a temporary basis as an "anti-spyware" program. It can delete spyware and scumware that is added onto PCs during the installation of popular software products (some of which include Kazaa, Morpheus, etc.). These spyware programs interfere with a users ability to use Blackboard, WebMail and several other commonly used university software programs. Download is available at http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10045910.html.

The next step in eliminating spyware should be to delete all unnecessary cookies. Cookies can readily be located by performing a search on the hard drive, allowing a user to examine and delete them individually. Cookies always have a .txt extension and typically are 1KB or 2KB in size. They usually reside in a specific folder, and can be identified by the URL following the user's login name (example: username@www.kazaa[1].txt). Some cookies are required in order to access legitimate resources (i.e. Outlook Web Access, flight reservation information, online purchases, etc.) but the vast majority is third-party installed to gather information about the user.

For more information regarding cookies and their proper removal, Microsoft has an excellent knowledge-base document:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q278835&