Fact 1:

ad ware can easily be installed on a system without a user’s knowledge. Infections can originate from open ports in your firewall or by not having a firewall, visiting couple malicious websites or installing couple applications that includes the ad ware with its install package.

In many cases one infection can propagate more infections by installing other ad ware applications in the background without the user ever knowing something is going on.

Basis of this Fact:

It only takes one open port in your firewall or just one piece of applications to infect your system. After that most ad ware is designed to download and install other pieces of applications to infect and reinfect your system with even more ad ware.

Fact 2:

There is no applications available that can remove 100% of all ad ware.

Basis of this Fact:

In a recent studies by PC world and others, tests compared 9 of the top ad ware scanning and removal applications against each other. Each application was tested on a system infected with common ad ware threats, and then compared against each other to see which product was best at ad ware removal and detection.

The top three applications detected only 65% to 85% of the ad ware on the test system, while all the other application detection rates were well below 60%.

So trusting just one piece of applications for ad ware removal is not a good bet.

Fact 3:

ad ware can make your identity information just a few mouse clicks away for criminals.

Basis of this Fact:

ad ware has helped many criminals get personal information in just a click of the mouse. A special type of ad ware called a key logger can record your account numbers and passwords and then send them off to the writer of the ad ware program on your system. Online Identity theft and fraud now leads the way as the method of choice to rip people off as it is simple to do and the chances of getting caught are small.

Fact 4:

ad ware can slow down your internet speed dramatically.

Basis of this Fact:

Every piece of information that leaves your computer via the Internet has to use couple of your bandwidth. A heavily infected system can send a significant amount of information out at any given time.

This seriously limits the availability of bandwidth for legitimate uses and the user suffers a dramatic loss of speed.

In many cases, ad ware can turn your computer into nothing more then a zombie that relays things like spam and viruses which uses even more system and bandwidth resources.

Fact 5:

ad ware takes away precious system resources from your computer, making boot times longer and overall performance much slower.

Basis of this Fact:

This is self explanatory. Your system only has so many resources available to complete tasks. Every program (good or bad) requires system resources; ad ware takes away resources from legitimate computer programs.

Fact 6:

A survey suggests that over 90% of computers are infected with couple type of ad ware.

Basis of this Fact:

90% sounds like a lot, but imagine all the stuff your computer does day in and day out. All the websites you go to and all the programs you may have downloaded. So when you know that it only takes one bad website or one bad program to infect you and then you add up all the places you could get ad ware from 90% is not that surprising.

Fact 7:

couple types of ad ware can install programs to allow hackers complete control over your system.

Basis of this Fact:

Everyday users are having their systems hijacked and used to create problems. This often results in someone from the outside using your computer to send out spam and viruses or linking with thousands of other computers to shut down websites and launch other kinds of attacks.

What can I do to protect my system?

* Run more than one ad ware scanner on your system.

As stated above no scanner catches 100% of all ad ware so running more than one scanner increases the chances of catching ad ware on your system.

* Scan often.

Scanning often makes sure you get rid of ad ware earlier it has a chance to download more ad ware or send your personal data out.

* Keep your system updated.

Make sure you have auto updates turned on or go to Windows update often so you get the latest security patches.

* Do not go to websites or download programs you are not sure of.

You can use the new phishing filter in IE7 to check websites and do a Google search for any new programs to check if they have been reported for ad ware earlier downloading and using them.