Spyware and Your Computer

Spyware and Your Computer Male: This is Spyware, I mean is there's actually some body or something spying on your personal— Male: Sure they’re collecting on the website you go to, your browsing habits and then they take, you know, the advertisers pay a lot of money for demographic information the advertising companies. And all that information they harvest it from your computer, they total run self advertisers on then as revenue. And that way they can say, “Okay, he has a mail this in his age group, these are the types of site she goes too. And these are the things that attract him to the site.” You know, whether or— Male: And then what do they’ll do with that information? Male: That’s how they tag you for advertising. Just like the supermarket they give us price plus cards that’s the same thing. They know every item that you bought in the store over the whole, you know, your of course you for shopping there. And then they can target you with advertising because now you get to print it out receipts in addition to it you'll see those receipts right and said you don’t buy, they try to make you change your buying hobbits with those receipts. And they track all that information if you buy instead to runs on you for totally, guess what? They see that their advertising worked. Male: Works, wow. Now the Spyware are the different types more effective less effective? Male: There some matter you know, more malicious than other so there are some matter out there with that to collect social security numbers, credit card numbers that kind—even key strokes. If you log in to your bank account through online banking if you're infected you could have something that’s actually tracking what your account number or at least your log in name and password is and there have been quite a few instances of that you hear on the news so. Male: Should identity debt it comes? Male: Sure. Male: I think so I mean what's the best way to protect yourself? Male: There's a number of things Firewall have a decent Firewall in place, an Antivirus or Anti Spyware program kept it up to date cost you about $30.00 to $40.00 a year to maintain. Those are just start you know, and then the other thing that I recommend to a lot of people most people are ideal with this, you know, in new car you change oil every 2000 miles. When is the last time you had your computer to end up or had somebody just come clean that all the garbage and just make sure you're not infected because a lot of times you may not know you're infected. Male: So that brings us to virus is also because those seems like—? Male: Oh, viruses are so much of a treat anymore now a day. Male: Was that? Male: The guy said generally who brought the viruses were pranksters. You know, you type in letter and let it soft following off the screen and what happens is they realized that, “All right, that nice for funny gigs but then I benefit in format.” But now what they didn’t says switch over the Spyware and they find that with the Spyware the advertisers are paying to do this the marketers are paying them to put up the pop up all over you screens so that we can't use the computer and they finding that’s more lucrative then just you know, a hooks. Male: So when you get a call and said they go to somebody’s house is it generally because the computers too slow its field with all this garbage is that generally the problem? Male: That usually I mean symptom that people start that same and wonder what's going on, on my computer, you know— Male: If that’s that I'm seeing all the time is just the computers just taking longer and longer to get from point A to point B? Male: But that’s the other issues, you know, one of the important things to do is to keep your system up to date with Windows updates and some patching and that generally is going to overtime slow down you machine. So you can have a machine that out of the box was quick and now with all the updates becomes very slow maybe it’s using more memory, more processing power— Male: So when they get that little message that says there are updates click now and by not clicking on that they don’t have the time I'm actually slowing down my computer. Male: Well, what happen are these hackers, okay, the guys are making all of the Spyware on Malware they find a holes in Windows and they explore them and what happen is every week Microsoft I think its on the Tuesday or Wednesday I think its Tuesday puts out a whole report here in new vulnerabilities we had, we patch some here with all the updates. Male: Really? Male: Where do you see that, that the report? Male: We go on Microsoft website. Male: Is there? Male: Yeah. And these hackers also have access to that information. So guess what if you don’t apply those patches they take advantage of those computers that weren’t in patched. Male: There's also an organization called Cert that maintains a list of vulnerabilities— Male: I saw that. Male: CER2 cert.org I believe and they maintain the list of vulnerabilities on numerous software, you know, I guess pretty much anything you can think off. They have a list of vulnerabilities that I discovered and you know, such an anxious Microsoft that’s actually releasing this information, it’s you know, the whole industry knows about the wholes when they come out and sometimes Cert will come out with them or hacker will come out with this and post it to Cert and make it know. Male: You know there's another thing we talk about the Antivirus they always took, they're all good, they're all pretty decent the only thing if they always play catch up. In other words how are you going to protect against something we don’t know without yet, so somebody has to first get infected it has to get out there enough for them to even said to show by the role of rate on to address it. You know, I see other thing a lot of people say, well, I got the latest stuff, I got this, I got that and I still get infected. Male: Something new? Male: It something new just like the flu virus—