Dangers of Spyware
A lot of the danger of spyware is obvious -- companies are building databases about the sites you visit and the things you search for, people can watch everything you do on your computer, advertisers can shove pop-ups in your face even when you're not surfing, and hackers can even wreck your computer.
But much of the danger is hidden. Perhaps not surprisingly, spyware software is often poorly written. If your computer runs more and more slowly as it gets older, and you haven't made any changes to it to make it run more slowly, there's a good chance that it's getting clogged up with spyware.
Since spyware watches everything you surf, or everything you type, and since there are many types of spyware that can all be installed on your computer at once, spyware can really kill your computer's performance. Some computers can even be rendered unusable by spyware, so slow and so unstable that it's impossible to do anything constructive on them. And since spyware almost always hides itself, you never realize that your computer is perfectly capable of doing what you need it to do -- you assume it's broken or too old, you might buy a new computer without realizing you could just clean the spyware out of the old one.
With these concerns and many others too numerous to list here, spyware is considered by many to be on par with viruses in terms of the power to harm your computer. And on top of that, spyware jeopardizes your privacy, something viruses don't do. For all these reasons, the danger of spyware is great.
Spyware Detection Stats
- Spyware Fingerprints: 91,859
- Detections: 6,733,379
- Detections this Month: 984
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