I write an occasional column for SitePoint, an Australian Web publication that targets the commercial and home Web developers out there. They're a good bunch and I get to write pretty much what and how much I want. Recently I've begun taking notice of the innumerable flavors of "spyware" and "adware" out there. I don't use file-sharing programs like Kazaa or Morpheus, but I still have to deal with the occasional unwanted program sneaking onto my computer and gumming up the works. In response, I did some research and found that the problem is a good deal more ubiquitous and troublesome than I thought. The column for SitePoint is very thorough, and gives a good deal more information than I'm going to hit you with this time around, but as a corollary to the article (which will be published in the first week of October), I thought I'd share some of the most useful items with you in this forum.

There's a lot of different kinds of "underware" (a sarcastic term I've coined to cover the entire gamut) out there. "Adware" basically downloads gobs of annoying pop-up and pop-under ads, Flash animations, and other intrusions onto your machine and displays them while you surf the Net. Some of them actually monitor your surfing habits and feed information back to the vendors, who in turn send you "tailored" advertisements based on the sites you visit most frequently. If you've been victimized by any of these, you might notice that ever since you downloaded a few MP3 files (for example) you've suddenly been inundated with ads hawking MP3 sites, audio utilities, entertainment pitches, and more. If you've noticed an unusual amount of these ads appearing as you surf, particularly ads for pornography, gambling sites, and questionable entertainment wares, you're probably running some adware on your machine. "Spyware" ups the ante considerably. You might notice your browser's home page being reset to something you didn't choose, your Favorites suddenly being larded with new entries for sites you've never visited, your search options being switched in favor of no-name search sites that are more advertising sites than search engines, and the like. You may see icons on your desktop to sites or utilities you've never seen (such as BonziBuddy or Lop.com). You may notice your machine behaving oddly, moving much more slowly or crashing frequently. You may find programs have downloaded and installed themselves on your machine without your knowledge. And you're probably tearing your hair out over the sudden influx of spam that's flooding your mailbox. "Malware" is software that does the above functions, but causes so much destruction and chaos in the process that many experts classify the offending programs as viruses or Trojan horses.

The best place to pick up "underware" is at any of the file-sharing networks. Kazaa is a particularly nasty source, slamming you with everything from minor annoyances like Gator and CometCursors all the way to a program from Brilliant that actually kidnaps your computer's processing system and uses it for its own purposes. Yeesh! Morpheus, iMesh, Aimster, Grokster, LimeWire, Bearshare, Audiogalaxy, and others are all known offenders as well. My advice: avoid these sites. If you must download the latest Goldfinger or Britney Spears MP3s from these sites, then take some precautions (see below). Of course, you can get unwanted -ware from a lot of sources, not just the file sharers, but they are by far the most pernicious source of this crud.

Here's a short list of the most well-known offenders. If you have these programs on your computer, you're better off getting rid of them ASAP. Gator: a much-hawked program that fills out Internet forms for you, but that also transmits lots of personal info to ad vendors; also includes OfferCompanion, an even sneakier program that replaces ads from visited sites with its own advertisements. eZula (TopText): purveyor of the evil "yellow links" that highlight words and phrases in Web sites; clicking on these links will take you to any one of a number of advertisers, some of which will throw more spyware at you. Cydoor: provider of an entire raft of adware. Aureate/Radiate: the grandpappy of ad- and spyware, this one isn't as devastatingly troublesome as some of the others, but boy, will you get ads and spam. BonziBuddy: passes itself off as a "kid-friendly" way to surf the Net, but in reality slams you with ads. There are plenty of others, many of them much worse than the ones I've listed.

Get rid of this mess by taking some precautions. First, never ever download anything without reading the licensing agreement. Yes, I know they're boring and longwinded, but you'll be amazed at what some of them will do if you agree to their terms. Next, check the anti-spyware sites. Four of them stand out: CounterExploitation at www.cexx.org/, SpyChecker at www.spychecker.com/, Gibson Research Company at grc.com/, and ThiefWare at www.thiefware.com/. There's plenty of information on these sites that you should know. Finally, download and use Ad-aware, a free and vitally necessary anti-spyware utility from www.lavasoftusa.com/. This one is a necessity, folks. One of my co-workers complained that the computers in her office were running very slowly. We installed Ad-aware on them and let the program do its thing. All four machines had over 100 ad- and spyware components on them; one was cleaned of 283 unneeded and unwanted spyware components.

Want a good scare? Visit www.evidence-eliminator.com/d2w/intro/server.d2w. Huh? How do they know all this? Who are these people? What the hell is going on? Hmph. They don't know anything except how to make your browser display your system contents (for your eyes only -- they can't see it) and IP information available to anyone who cares to tune in to what your computer and your ISP is broadcasting. The idea is for you to get frightened and buy the program, Evidence Eliminator, that the site is hawking. Pay no attention. The program doesn't work and the site isn't tracking you. But it's a fun site to use to scare the hell out of someone who doesn't know what's coming.

Here's the link to the SitePoint article: Adware and Underware: The Definitive Guide. Take my word on it, folks, this stuff is serious. Take heed, and take care.