Securing your computer is more important than ever, but from what are we securing it? We'll discuss spyware and how a few simple steps can ensure that your computer isn't acting on its own and working against you.
Guests
Joe Konstan
Joe Konstan
Joe Konstan is a professor at the University of Minnesota's Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He specializes in human-computer interaction and has written on related topics, including a recent paper titled "Stopping Spyware at the Gate: A User Study of Privacy, Notice and Spyware."
Neil Brock
Neil Brock
Neil Brock is an information technology professional for Academic and Distributed Computing Services at the University of Minnesota. He coordinates support for ResNet, the Internet connection provided to students in the University resident halls, and recently developed a Safe Computing Seminar that he now teaches.
For Your Files
Joe Konstan, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, defined spyware:
"Spyware is software that somehow gets onto your computer and once it's there takes personal information—perhaps the Web sites that you're visiting or even the data that you're sending to those sites—and ships it off to some third party without your consent and without your knowledge."
And he explained how spyware gets on our computers:
"In most cases, what happens is, while you're installing something that you agreed to, these additional spyware modules are installed alongside it. In the most honest case, you might say, 'Yes, I'm very happy to have this piece of software installed' and not even realize that you agreed for it to watch what you're doing and ship data back. In other cases you may never have been told at all and it just comes along for the ride."
Before downloading software, Professor Konstan suggests:
"One of the best things to do is find out what other people think about that same software. You can do this by talking to people you know who are knowledgeable about software, who may have installed it. You can go to some of the reputable sites for software reviews. An example is PC Magazine. It has lots of software reviews. It's going to give a good indication of what's reputable. For different topics there are different examples; but the other example is to just search online—if you were to go to Google's news groups you can search through and find out all sorts of experiences people have had. If 15 or 20 people start complaining 'hey, I did this and my computer shut down,' don't install it."
Neil Brock, technology specialist at the U, said some signs that spyware may be on your computer are:
"If your computer is slowing down—a lot slower than it used to be. A lot of these spyware will take up the computing power of the computer, so everything will slow down. Also, a lot of pop-ups will show up. Those are generally adware type things; spyware and adware are very similar."
Neil also said to get spyware off your computer you should:
"Run a couple anti-spyware programs. The ones we recommend are Spybot-Search and Destroy, and Lavasoft Ad-Aware. And Microsoft itself has come out with a Microsoft anti-spyware that is still partly under development but you can download that and run it now. It actually works pretty well. With anti-spyware programs it is a good idea to run more than one because each one may catch stuff that the other one doesn't catch. You can download them from the Internet. And a good place to find those is the University safe computing Web site. We have recommendations there and the places to download them. It's at http://safecomputing.umn.edu.
Links
Links to resources mentioned by the guests include the following:
- PC Magazine;
- Google's news groups;
- Spybot-Search and Destroy;
- Lavasoft Ad-Aware (from the home page, select one of the Ad-Aware links in the left side bar);
- Microsoft's Windows (Security & Updates) page; and
- the University of Minnesota Safe Computing page.
Administrator Password
The "administrator" account on a computer has control over the entire computer: what can be installed and what the security settings are. Having a password to this account on the computer ensures that no one but you can make changes to these settings.
Definition File
For anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, this is a set of information on how to detect and remove malicious files. The more recent the date on the definition file, the more complete the detection and removal tools are.
License Agreement
A legal contract between you and the creator or distributor of software outlining the terms under which you are allowed to use the software. Generally this must be agreed to before the software can be installed and can sometimes permit the creator or distributor to install other software, such as spyware, on your computer.