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Unleash AdAware

No doubt you've heard of the menace that is spyware, or perhaps you met its uglier cousin, malware . This is software (although if I were to classify it, I'd call it a member of the virus family) which tricks its way onto your computer, almost like a Trojan, and just as invading. It's the extras that get installed with shareware and various other dubious bits of software, but it can just as easily come from web sites and unsigned ActiveX controls.

ActiveX Control: A type of program which resides on the web and uses your web browser to run. Most ActiveX controls are beneficial, e.g. QuickTime and Flash, but some can open the floodgates for rubbish.

Unfortunately, its what Spyware does that really matters. The first stuff was just marketing - a load of extra pop-ups, and so on. Recently, it's become a distribution media for viruses and the like. Flood of pop-ups, unusual or unexplained files residing on your computer, a lot of hard disk usage, cookies, etc. The "job" of it is to flog you as much junk as possible. Alas, that's not all. Modern stuff can come in the form of dialers , which replace your Dial-up connection with one to a premium rate number, and usually something unsavoury. A lot of modern stuff will sift through your Internet cache and cookies and try to send personal information to the creator.

Perhaps the most irritating thing about Spyware is that it's damn near impossible to kill. Fortunately, there are a few good souls out there fighting a war against these zitty teens or desperate corporations, and they've produced some excellent tools. One such is Ad-Aware from Lavasoft , and we'll be looking at installing, updating and using Ad-Aware in this article.

Ad-Aware is a free download for home users. Commercial users and establishments are required to pay a not unreasonable license fee.

Download

Get Ad-Aware from http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10045910.html - this is via CNet's download service at http://www.download.com . The developer also have a list of links from which you can obtain the thing.

Ad-Aware weighs in at about 2.51MB, which won't take too long to download, even on most dial-up connections. As always, you can either save it to disk and run it from there, or run it direct. Watch out for Microsoft's security precautions, those of you with XP SP2...

As always, you should take the precaution of having an active and up-to-date virus scanner running.

Installation

The software comes in a nice installation program, so no shocks there. The process is quite simple.

Once installation starts, you'll be asked the usual...accept the license agreement, choose an installation location, choose who gets the application (I recommend you give it to all users) and we're done.

At the end, you'll be prompted as to what happens next. For now, I recommend keeping the box marked "Update definition files now" checked, and un-checking the other two ("Perform a full system scan now" and "Open help file")

Update

OK, straight away, Ad-Aware will fly off and look for updates. It's almost a dead cert there will be some, and these will be installed. Updating Ad-Aware is like updating your virus scanner, in that it allows the software to recognise and respond to new threats.

At the same time, the update tool will check with Lavasoft to see if the actual program files have been updated. If they have, you will be taken to a download page, and must run another installation. As this is a fresh install, this won't be the case.

Scanning

While Ad-Aware can charge through your entire computer, including all files on all drives, all registry entries and other user settings, for the purpose of this article, we'll look at the Smart Scan option, which is quite effective.

Once Ad- Aware's been updated, and it won't take particularly long, you'll be directed to the main interface.

To get going, click Start, then ensure the top option "perform smart system scan" is selected, and click Next. This will take between 2 and 5 minutes.

Smart scanning tends to look at the most likely locations for spyware , including key system files, your user profile and your Internet cache, etc. It's not as thorough as full scanning, but it's quicker, and still picks up the stuff.

Once the scan's done, it's likely to have found things. Unpleasant things. Click Next. Now, we'll speed up a bit. Click on the "Scan Summary" tab. Right-click on either of the two items and click "Select All". By default, Ad-Aware only deletes the more "critical" rubbish, but we might as well dump the lot.

Conclusion

If you leave having followed this article, but don't repeat the process on a regular basis, then you've wasted your time. Alas, spyware is a continuing problem which is getting worse. Keep Ad-Aware up-to-date and run a smart scan weekly and a full scan monthly, and your system should keep clean.

There are other applications available for Spyware removal, notably:

More Information

For more information on using Ad-Aware, check out the manual. Click Start, point to Programs (or All Programs), then Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE, and choose the manual.

You can also visit the developer, Lavasoft, at http://www.lavasoft.de for news and product help and updates/add- ons .

Author: Rob Church