What is Adware: a Guide for Newbies

Adware, much like spyware, is a type of computer program that is installed behind the scenes, without the user's knowledge, for the purpose of gathering and reporting information about that computer user's activities.

Adware applications can do a number of damaging things to your personal computer. Adware infects your pc and hides in the background and can do many nasty things to the performance of your system. It can also do harmful things to you such as send out your personal information, your every keystroke and photo that resides on your hard drive, watch your surfing habits and shopping habits and annoy you with annoying pop-ups filled with advertisements and even pornography.

If you are starting to notice a change in the performance of your computer, or are starting to see new pop-ups, changes to your toolbar, or new icons on your desktop, you are more than likely infected with some type of adware. Should that be the case, you should scan your computer with adware remover to see if you are in fact infected. When selecting the adware program to use, be sure it comes from a credible source like Kaspersky. If not, the program you download may contain even more adware or spyware!

Did yo know that 95% of computers are infected with some form of adware or spyware?

Symptoms of an infection can include the following:




constant pop-ups when surfing the Internet

a slow Internet connection

a computer that is slower than it used to be

the Internet connection icon on the toolbar shows activity even when you aren't surfing

new sites make their way onto your browser's list of bookmarks

your default home page changes and you can't seem to change it back

new and unwanted toolbars or search boxes get installed on your browser


To prevent the infection of your computer, you will need more than just antivirus software. You will need a complete Internet security suite that includes spyware and adware protection. This is because adware sneaks into your computer via executable files that can launch without you taking any action whatsoever. These files are harmful and annoying, but you can protect yourself from them. An excellent product for this is Kaspersky Internet Security Suite 2009. Kaspersky is a very credible name in the industry and many of the other brand-name antivirus and anti-spyware products rely on Kaspersky technology to make them run.