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Is your computer acting strange? Programs crashing, browser acting up, pop-ups continually invading your Internet surfing or other bizarre behavior? Do you find websites suddenly popping up when you didn't want to go there? Did you ever click on a product and find you're suddenly at another website? Has your favorite homepage been suddenly replaced? If so, you may have been invaded by some nasty programs referred to as parasiteware, adware, thiefware, spyware and scumware.
Would you install software that collects your personal information and sends it back to the owner of the program? Would you let some gather your personal information and then keep track of everywhere you go and everything you see on the Internet? Would you have someone else decide where you are going to shop and help them steal money from the owners of your favorite websites? It's highly unlikely anyone would knowingly install such software, which is why the creators don't tell you that you're installing it but just install it without your knowledge.
These programs are usually installed piggyback on some other software you installed. You think you're downloading and installing this cool program and don' t realize you may be installing these privacy intrusion applications. Are you curious who would do such a nasty deed and betray your trust? Well, you may be surprised to learn who is doing this today. Below is a list of software titles that are reported to have these applications and links to learn more and how to remove them and get your privacy and computer back. If you installed any of these programs, you may want to have your computer scanned and cleaned:
Kazaa, Morpheus, Bearshare, Gnutella, Limewire, Grokster, Aimster, iMesh, Audiogalaxy, Gator, SurfPlus, TopText, RadLight, BonziBuddy, CometCursor, GoHip and list goes on and on. Like we said earlier, you probably don't even know the software was installed on your computer. Why do they sneak it in? Because who would actually want someone stalking their Internet activity and making decisions for them?
Getting rid of these spies and thieves is usually easy. Links below have utilities, both free and paid, that will help you get rid of these applications. There are companies out there willing to help you clean up your computer for free, including us. Whether you use one of the free versions of the removal utility or buy one, it doesn't matter to us either way since we don't get paid either way. To be honest, we do benefit in a couple ways. We make you an aware consumer-then you have a CHOICE to give them your personal information or not. We also benefit because the more people who are aware, the less likely the thiefware applications will steal our money. You see, many sites, like this one, survive on advertising commissions. Some of these applications, while watching your Internet activity, are looking for keywords their advertisers purchased. When one of those keywords appears on a page, they show you underlined text, pop-up ads, or otherwise hijack you to another site. By doing this, they steal our income. Running a website, like this one, is not free or easy. People come here and return because they found something of value. We can only continue to operate if can pay our bills. The software we mentioned here does not add any value to the average surfer. You don't go to their sites because you enjoy reading their information, or buying their products. Since they don't have value to offer, they must steal visitors from the other websites. Enough said, if you want to check your system and see who is stalking you check out the links below.
Probably one of the most popular utilities out there, and the one that opened my eyes is Ad-aware and can be downloaded at http://www.lavasoft.de. Download it and run it, you may be very surprised who is watching you. Oh yes, it's free!
You can find some more choices at http://www.cexx.org/.
If you want to read a very good, in-depth article check out http://www.ecommercebase.com/article.php?pid=0&aid=888, it will open your eyes.
If you do nothing else, please install anti virus and firewall software. These are absolutely necessary if you are connected to the Internet in any way. If you have any questions or comments you can email the webmaster of this site (we're not listing the address because of the email address harvesters that search this site each month looking for more spam victims). Almost every site, including this one, has an email address of webmaster@ and the domain name, now you know.
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