Spyware removal

How simple and cheap it is to get hold of spy software now! Scores of various spy programs are available online, many of them for free. So are numerous programs promising you quick and easy spyware removal - if all the ads were true, we wouldn't have any problems with spyware. But we do. What is wrong with anti-spyware? There are three major weaknesses that let spyware live and flourish:

First, signature base analysis - the very principle the majority of anti-spyware is based on. Most anti-spy products, whatever their names are and whatever their advertising says, apply the same scheme – pattern matching. These programs scan the system, looking for code that matches signatures – pieces of spyware code, which are kept in so-called signature bases. Only programs from the signature base are recognized; all other spy programs will be running unnoticed and unstopped.

This approach makes anti-spyware developers inevitably lag behind spyware writers. Without frequent updating anti-spy products lose their efficiency very quickly and even become dangerous because the PC owner still relies on his anti-spy.

Unfortunately, no signature base is complete enough to guarantee total protection. Even if the base is updated regularly, if some spyware signature is not included there the anti-spy software is helpless against this software. For some time anti-spies do not recognize a brand-new spyware product – until its signature is included into the bases and users update their anti-spies.

Second, there are kinds of spyware which are unlikely to be included into any signature base. For example:

• Spy software may be included into the kernel of some operating system by its developers.
• Spy software can be developed by government organizations for their own purposes (e.g. Magic Lantern software, the project named Cyber Knight, USA)
• Some commercial, especially corporate, monitoring products are very rarely included into signature bases; if they are, that's only for political reasons (e.g. software products of such well-known companies as WinWhatWhere Corporation, SpectorSoft Corporation, ExploreAnywhere Software LLC, Omniquad Ltd., etc.)
• There might be only one copy of a spy program. Spyware, just like clothes, can be "tailor-made". It doesn't take too long for a good programmer to write one. Hackers often take source codes of spy software from the Internet change them a bit and then compile something new, which no signature base will recognize.

Third, spyware evolves. Thanks to their authors, spy programs gain more and more properties to counteract anti-spies. Some spy programs are now capable of blocking work of the particular kinds of anti-spyware. Spyware and anti-spyware developers compete in creating products that can crush its enemy without being crushed themselves.