How to Protect Your Computer From a Trojan Horse - Computer Sciences Textbooks

How to Protect Your Computer From a Trojan Horse
By Mark E Newman

Using Google as a research aide for her thesis on money laundering was a common occurrence of one individual law school student. Naturally, this was helpful to the course of writing her paper. As her research progressed, the student noticed that she was being directed to an annoying page that had nothing to do with her subject matter every time she typed key words into the search box.

As the persistence of the problem lingered, she grew increasingly certain that it was the result of being bugged rather than a problem with Google or her internet connection. As far as irritations go, human beings that bug us are the most easy to fend off. Stopping adware and spyware, the type of bugs that plagued the student, is much more difficult. Though the student used her computer daily for the research and writing of her papers, she was otherwise not very technologically educated.

The situation above is not an isolated case, there are many people who find themselves caught up in technology problems that are mind boggling but actually can be answered with two words and those two words are spyware and adware. Though it did not gain popularity until 2000, the term 'spyware' was first introduced in 1995. This refers to any software program or script which allows admission to the computer owner's personal information.

Typically examining the keystrokes and browsing history of the computer user, this spying can also include hard drive infiltration. Though these methods seem like the kind of severe tactics one would expect out of a good Hollywood spy flick, anyone can fall prey to spyware. Calling people affected by these attacks victims is accurate, as no one wishes to have their online activities monitored. Frequently spyware is used for stealing private information such as credit card details, and this far outweighs the benefits of tracking criminals using these programs. Including good anti-spyware programs on your computer system only makes sense.

As they are similarly harmful programs, malware and adware should be blocked along with spyware. Helping in these tasks are the many blocker programs designed for adware and spyware. Current programs causing harm to your system are disabled or removed, and future threats are prevented from infiltrating your system through the usage of these blockers.

Spyware, adware, and malware prove that computer bugs do not have to be self replicating, like viruses and worms, to prevent the normal usage of computers. After being infiltrated, computers typically experience a noticeable decline in their speed. In some infections, spyware is not even evident as the cause so it can get away with its crime. It only makes sense to install a good blocker in order to prevent the installation of these infectious programs.

A Trojan Horse can destroy your computer. Like its mythical namesake (dramatised in Lego), whatever crawls out of a digital Trojan horse will be a nasty surprise. A Trojan horse usually takes the form of an innocuous software program that unleashes a flood of malware or viruses after it's installed and run. Since attacks and ease of removal vary -- an ad generator is easier to remove than a stealth rootkit -- there's no one-size-fits-all solution. However, there are some common techniques for picking your way through the wreckage. In my experience, using both Zone Alarm and AVG Anti Spyware offer the best computer security in todays cyber spy world.

Mark Newman is a successful entrepreneur, both in the offline and online arenas. To read more tips and techniques like the ones in this article, please click here: http://KNIGHTinvestor.NET

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