Hi guys. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the computer virus would have to be outdated now since spyware seems to be more destructive. I find that with my job, I spend more time on security jobs where I have to remove spyware than I do on removing viruses. A virus usually does one thing and masquerades as a system file. Spyware on the other hand can be annoying and quite dangerous, especially to your hip pocket. Spyware such as Spy Falcon and WinFixer, which are easy to remove, just annoy the hell out of users and try to trick them into paying for software they don’t actually need and does nothing in the end. I setup a clean system and knowingly put Spy Falcon on it and within the first few minutes it was telling me my system was infected and that I should pay up to protect my system, even though I knew it was clean. Spyware effects range from pop-ups, email address catching and browser hijacking right through to getting you to pay for something that does nothing or doesn’t even exist. I’ve the latter seen it happen three times to customers over the past two weeks.
This is a serious issue and while we bust our guts and clean the systems and install software to protect the customer, the spyware makers just keep coming up with new versions of spyware that can’t be removed or take longer to remove, or if removed , render the OS inoperable. Granted most spyware is made for and targeted at Windows users but I’d like to hear what people have to say on this, do you think Spyware is now a bigger threat than viruses and what do you think the worst spyware for is for Windows, Mac, *nix and other OSes.