TOP TECH TIPS – Spyware

Do you have an antivirus program on your computer? That’s an excellent way to waste money and slow your PC down by 90%. It turns out viruses stopped happening in 2013. Yes, 2013. Threats still occur, but they’re far beyond viruses now. Unfortunately most local computer guys haven’t learned this yet, so they’re doing virus scans wondering why they can’t find anything.

Today let’s talk about New Threat #1: LEGALIZED SPYWARE
It’s not like someone banged a gavel and declared spyware to be legal – but rather, the bad guys discovered that as long as they use certain keywords, or claim to help you in some way, they can spy on you legally. Here are some examples:

“Toolbars” claim to help you find maps, track packages, or save PDFs, but instead hijack your web browser’s homepage, intercept your online searches, and then sell your online behavior.

“Customer Participation Programs” / “Customer Experience Improvement Programs” sneak in alongside your printer drivers. It presumably records your printing behavior and claims to help the manufacturer improve its future products, but when have printers improved?

“Cleaners”/ “Optimizers” use smoke & mirror tactics to convince you that you have “errors” in your machine. They then promise to clean it for a one-time or even monthly fee, but inevitably slow it down.

So if your computer is slow, it has nothing to do with it being old, or it having viruses. In reality, it’s likely infected with fully legalized spyware. All you have to do is uninstall it and your machine will be faster than ever.

Top Tech Tips brought to you by Marc-Anthony Arena, The Computer Exorcist. He explains tech concepts, scams, and scandals in Plain English, and teaches technicians how to protect consumers. Find his book and podcast at TheComputerExorcist.com