If you’re like me, when you hear the term “spyware”, you think of hidden software that steals your personal information or hijacks your PC and turns it into a spam sending “robot”. Or you might think of hidden software that monitors your online browsing and shopping habits in order to display annoying pop up ads on your computer screen. While these are very real and common threats associated with spyware, most people don’t think of the biggest spyware threat of all – cyber terrorism.

Around 80% of all the computers on the internet are not adequately protected against dangerous spyware that is becoming just as prevalent as computer viruses. Spyware is a type of malicious application that is installed quickly and secretly just by opening certain types of attachments, installing certain “free” software, or visiting unscrupulous websites. Since spyware doesn’t have the same characteristics as a computer virus, most anti virus software cannot detect all types of spyware, so it is necessary to use specialized “anti spyware” software to protect against it.

Spyware has many purposes, depending on its creator’s intent. Nearly all spyware is designed for illegitimate or illegal purposes, and most users don’t even know their PC is infected with spyware because it runs quietly in the background. Spyware can capture your personal information such as bank accounts, user id’s, passwords, and credit card numbers, and transmit this data to the thief who created it (all without your knowledge). Spyware can also create a “back door” into your computer, allowing its creator access to your PC anytime he/she wants it. Spyware can also allow your computer to be remotely controlled and used for things such as spamming, hosting illegal websites, or participating in cyber attacks on companies or governments – all without your knowledge.

Although all spyware is dangerous, the “remote control” type of spyware presents the greatest danger of all due to its ability to harness the processing power of millions of infected PC’s (known as “robots”, or “bots”), and use them as one big “supercomputer”. With a huge army of hijacked computers, cyber criminals have already proven they can launch crippling denial of service (“DoS”) attacks can bring down websites and entire corporations. As criminals and spyware developers become more sophisticated and users continue to allow spyware to reside on their PC’s, it is only a matter of time before cyber-terrorists launch a huge “bot” attack that threatens our national security.

According to a recent article in Information Week, dangerous “bot” spyware is not only present on millions of home computers, but on a substantial number of business and government computers as well. The fact that “bots” are already on the “inside” of our government is particularly frightening to me, because this gives terrorists the potential opportunity to crash entire agencies or sniff out and steal any information they want.

Protecting personal data as well our country’s security is something that every computer owner needs to take part in. If all computer owners used anti spyware software, anti virus software, and practiced safe computing habits, the threat of spyware based cyber-terrorism and identity theft would likely not exist. With so many excellent and affordable anti-spyware products on the market today, there is no excuse for failing to protect ourselves.

For more information on spyware and anti-spyware software, visit
http://www.antivirus-firewall-spyware.com/spyware.html. Here is some information on Trend Micro internet security and anti-spyware software.