What is spyware and adware?

[tamilvendan]

Hello friends!

I want to know what spywares and adwares are. I am having this problem now. Whenever I log in to yahoomail to check mails after opening the inbox the browser window automatically changes to what it was initially and along with that many small windows open saying that my pc is infected with spywares. If close them and hit the back button in the broser window the same thing keeps recurring. But if i click the yes in the small window and it opens a browser window which has information about all the spyware killers my yahoo mail window works undisturbed.

I even downloaded some virus scan called "free spy-ware" scan and it did the scanning and found there are about 40 spywares in my system. To clean them I have to buy their products. When I checked my drives with McAfee scan which has been already installed in the system it doesn't detect any viruses.

Throw some light on this.

 

[rachitar]

Spyware and virus are two different things
Spyware is something which will get installed on your comp and then send out info's about u through the net to the "master"
Adware is a software like spyware which will show advertisments on ur comp from time to time
What u need is to go to www.download.com and install spydoctor from there(read the info and reviews)
Also u should get a good pop up blocker from there.
And dont pay any heed to what those pop ups say that u have spyware,ur PC is running slow blah blah

 

[swatkat]

See this for complete info on all types of threats and how to avoid them....
*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11368

 

[bharathbala2003]

hmm its like a S/W program that tracks your moment n sumtimes report it to the creator.. try downloadin wat rachitar
said.. and also follow the link Swat gave

 

[tamilvendan]

I did as u suggested and it was working fine. Now the spyware doctor is not working. It shows an error message saying " the program has been damaged probably due to a bad sector of the hard drive or a virus. Please reinstall" I uninstalled and reinstalled but the same msg comes. I even downloaded a fresh spyware doctor from download.com and and the same error msg comes after installing it. What do i do now?
Will the spywares track down the passwords we use for internet banking transactions?

 

[swatkat]

download and install Spybot SnD, AdAware, SwatIt! and scan ur system.
Also, get HijackThis and scan ur system and save log file.
Then post the contents of log file here.....

*security.kolla.de/
*www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
*swatit.org/
*www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html