Check For Spyware
You need a good anti spyware program, again it should update itself or be updated by you on a regular basis.
Spyware is more difficult to protect against than a virus because the definitions of spyware have different meanings to different people and software providers.
Some remote control programs that Network Administrators find invaluable are considered spyware by some software vendors because they allow remote control of the computer but hey, that is their purpose in life! So anti spyware programs can alarm you with their results if you don’t take the time to carefully analyze those results.
In most cases there is a way to flag your useful programs if they do cause an alert so that it won’t keep happening, of course it is a double edged sword, if you use too broad of a flag then you may lower your detection rate to a point that something bad gets ignored. Hey, no one said this would be easy!
Free Anti Spyware programs include:
Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware SE, Personal Edition
http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
Microsoft Windows Defender
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/computer/default.mspx
Spybot Search & Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/
But if you feel better paying for software then there are these:
Navarre Webroot Spy Sweeper
http://www.webroot.com/En_US/index.html
Macafee Virus Scan and Anti Spyware
Get one or more of these, run them and see what you find, it may have amazing results.
Now, unlike antivirus programs you can have as many antispyware programs installed as you like.
My personal favourite is MalwareBytes available here
Good luck,
John
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