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While viruses tend to grab all the headlines as an Internet or email menace, they are not the only dangers that can await the unwary surfer. Any of your Internet activity can be monitored. It is no use looking over your shoulder as this form of close supervision is carried out by various types of software that have been grouped into a category known as Spyware.

This particular type of software includes items such as Trojans, keyloggers, system monitors, adware and cookies. The intention of this form of software is to gather information that could prove useful to a third party either by extracting sensitive personal data or tracking activity in order to indicate your likely preferences in certain situations. While this form of software can infect your system while online, it can also download itself on to your system while you are carrying out other tasks. Fortunately there is a means of protecting yourself from this unwanted intrusion.

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Spy Sweeper is a Webroot product that sets out to protect users from the various forms of spyware. The latest version of this product, available from your friendly retailer, is version 4. However this is not the most up-to-date version of the software which is currently 4.5. This is available for downloading from Webroot’s web site (www.webroot.com) and is available free for those using version 4. The download consists of 8.23MB of data which could be off-putting for those who only have access to a dial-up account.

Installing the software requires you to enter a 20-character serial number and then register the product in order to get the free one year subscription of updates. These updates are important as they will include the latest definition files used to identify any new varieties of spyware. To gain the full benefit of the program it needs to form part of your start-up routine and it will automatically add itself to this procedure.

Once installed, and any updates downloaded, you should run a sweep of your system. While comprehensive in its activity, it is not all that time consuming. On my test machine it took under six minutes to thoroughly check memory, registry, cookies and around 9GB of data stored on the hard disk. Any items found are presented in a list with basic information regarding the type of spyware. Further information about each item is available online to help you make the decision whether to keep or remove.

One alternative to an immediately removal is to use the program’s quarantine feature. This allows you to place offending items within a secure area while you check whether they are needed for other software to function properly. You decide how long the items are kept in quarantine before being removed from your system.

As well as checking your system, either instigated manually or as part of a user-defined schedule, Spy Sweeper will monitor your system for any untoward activity. Using a range of shields, which can be turned on or off by the user, Spy Sweeper will detect and warn of any alteration being attempted to the start-up menu; countermand any instances of your browser being redirected to other sites; and block unauthorised additions to the favourites’ listing.

As the developers of spyware are constantly devising new methods of gaining access to your system, Webroot has developed its Phileas technology. Named after the character from Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days novel, Phileas makes use of hundreds of “bots” that spend their time searching URLs, at the rate of up to nine per second, to check for new instances of spyware so helping Spy Sweeper to keep its definition files up-to-date.

Spy Sweeper is an excellent product. It is easy to use and set up plus it is not too intrusive with any monitoring activities that it carries out. The product is very reasonably priced at £24.99 (online) and can run on any version of Windows from 98 onwards with a 100MHx processor with 16MB RAM.

http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/spysweeper/?WRSID=436d31175cb4a4bce967932bd0fb61cb