An Unofficial guide to spywares and online safety

How to remain safe while being online:

First of all you should understand what types of threats are there on the net...
While most users are aware of virus and worms threat, they usually overlook the other biggest threat ie the spywares.

What are spywares ?
Spywares are programs that get installed on your computer without your knowledge and collect data about your usage patterns like what sites you visit, what programs you run, even your personal details like age, gender and financial details too : all those things that can be useful for a marketing company to
installed.
The user should pay attention to the Terms and Conditions or EULA of them program being installed. Reference to third party installation should be given more attention.

Not every freeware is a spyware. But those free programs which utilize the internet to deliver their objectives should be looked at suspicously. Usually Search Assistants or popup blockers apart from reputable companies should be avoided.
The user should remain careful of sites he visits. Most of the users get infected while browsing the "underground" sites. Websites that provides cracks or porn websites are often source of dialers and hijackers. The user should use his intuition while browsing these sites. They will not come to you if you dont go to them.

Use antispywares:
Programs like Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad Aware are considered reputed in removing spywares. Spyware Blaster is a great utility that will not let the spywares getting installed in the first place. All these program should be updated regularly as new parasites gets discovered daily.

Use Firewall:
Firewalls have become a necessity these days. And those with with always on connection should enable firewall on their systems. Firewall monitors the network traffics and blocks unnecessary connections. They are also effective against worms propogating through random ip addresses.

Use Antivirus:
Antivirus are now just as essentials as operating systems are. Antivirus should be updated regularly too as new virus are discovered on daily basis.

Use Windows Update regularily:
As new vulnerabilities are discovered, parasites exploiting them too arise. So patches to fix them should be installed regularily.