Perhaps the most widespread problem on the internet today is a vast amount of programs designed to provide endless amounts of advertisement and demographic analysis. Spy-ware, ad-ware and pop-ups in general can cause more than mere annoyance however.

Many of these programs install software on your computer without your consent or often knowledge of their existence and can cause severe performance issues. These programs can infect your computer much like a virus and can eventually bring the entire computer to a halt. There are, however, many easy ways to minimize these problems on your computers.

The best way to stop these programs from installing on your computers is to limit the amount of web browsing done on company computers. Sticking to sites you know and trust can reduce the amount of spy-ware and ad-ware significantly. This won’t solve the entire problem however.

Pop-up blockers are also a good idea. Microsoft introduced a pop-up blocker for Internet Explorer in a recent update and it tends to do a mediocre job of stopping the pop-ups you want blocked and allowing the ones you want to see. A better solution might be to install Google Toolbar which not only acts as a pop-up blocker but also adds a search bar to your browser. Google Toolbar tends to recognize the pop-ups that you want to see more often and blocks the content you don’t want to see in a much more consistent manner. Be careful of other programs that add “pop-up protection” or a “search bar” as many of these programs are themselves spy-ware.

Many of the programs that install themselves on your computer use features in Internet Explorer to infest your computer. Changing to a different style browser can prevent many of these programs from working at all. Firefox is a great browser for limiting spy-ware, ad-ware and pop-ups. It comes with Google Toolbar already installed and minimizes the overall susceptibility to these programs.

We also highly recommend you get and run an anti-spy-ware program such as Spy-Bot or Ad-aware. Again it is important to do some research on the software you use as they may be spy-ware themselves. Most anti-virus software packages come with spy-ware detection now and can be used as an all-in-one solution.

Taking all these precautions may not fully protect your computer, but it should at least delay the need for service. If your computers performance begins to deteriorate, it may be prudent to rebuild at least the software portion of you computer.

By Ryan Noble © 2006