Microsoft Anti-Spyware

Microsoft has been meet in recent years with an immense amount of criticism. Rightfully so their operating systems have continually caused many people to seek psychologists. However I see many signs of improvement within the company. It began with the Windows firewall that came with service pack 2. Although it does have bugs it is a step in the right direction. Their latest release Microsoft's anti-spyware program can be described with one word brilliant. The main reason is that it has a "Real-Time" monitoring system. I was ecstatic to see the program give a pop-up to confirm that I wanted to change the homepage on my browser when I decided I was tired of seeing my yahoo mail account empty every time I start IE. My favorite part of the program is the system explorer in the advanced features. It helps identify what processes are running and if there are any known spyware or virus associated with each process. Microsoft still has a long road ahead to please its disgruntled customer base but programs such as these are a great way to say "I'm sorry".

Hidden Worms

When we hear about PC security on the internet we all know by now not to download anything from the internet that comes from an unknown source. However a fair amount of the worms and pop-ups that are on people's computers come from products we download knownly. Programs such as kazaa and other P2P programs come with data mining programs that go into you system registry collect data and use that data to create pop-up's on your computer. The major problem with this is that as long as you click "yes" to the user agreement you are agreeing to them doing this. To combat these issues make sure you download programs from sites such as CleanSoftware.org, that provide spyware free versions of the same software you probably already have on your computer.