Spyware are programs that send information about your computer, and possibly
personal information to track you, back to collection servers for storage
and analasys. Mostly for marketing purposes, but the programs are notorious
for wreaking machines. They collect information about what you do on your
computer, where you go, what programs you use, your machine specs, your
location, your ip address, etc. If you don't mind companies spying on you,
tracking you, and using you while wreaking your computer, then go ahead and
install. If you like your privacy, then stay away from programs such as
this. Searching on google.com is a good place to start when trying to find
out if a certain piece of software has spyware in it. There is also adware,
which are programs that send you pop up ads. And there are home page
hijacker which take control of your browser and send you to pages you don't
want to goto. Of course there are trojans and viruses as well. The internet
can be a dangerous place.
Run these tools weekly
spybot --
http://www.safer-networking.org/
ad-aware --
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
HiJackThis -
http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/