What is spyware? Spyware is when a program is placed on your PC without your consent. The most common way for this to happen is when you install a separate application such as a file sharing program or free download utility on your computer. The program you install also places some "extra" programs on your PC. These extra programs perform tasks from recording what websites you visit to popping up ads on your screen. More worrying are spyware programs that record everything you type on your keyboard. That's right. Your most private instant messages, emails and chat room discussions can easily be stored and transmitted without your approval. Scary stuff!

Are there different types of spyware? There are many different classifications of spyware but following are most dangerous types:

Adware The most common type of spyware. These are small programs which sit on your computer waiting for you to go online. Once adware detects that you're connected to Internet it starts sending you popup, popover and popunder ads for anything from airline tickets to porn site membership. Not only that but information on your viewing habits is then sold on to marketing companies who will then send you more junk email and popup ads than you ever thought possible.

Browser Hijacker These are just plain annoying. These install themselves on your computer and change your default homepage and search engine to something else. Every time you start your web browser it will bring you to a page filled with ads, porn or other unwanted material. This interrupts your web browsing and is intensely annoying. Most browser hijackers are also data miners. A data mining program reports your web browsing habits to a central database. This information is then sold on to marketing companies.

Firstly we need to quickly explain what Internet is and where it came from. The Internet is offspring of a military project called Arpanet. Arpanet was designed to provide reliable communication during global nuclear war. A vast network of interconnected computers was set up all over world to allow various branches of US and NATO forces to communicate with each other.

Nuclear war never came (thankfully) and world was left with a massive network of computers all connected together with nothing to do. Colleges and universities started to use these computers for sharing research internationally. From there it grew and spread outside colleges to local homes and businesses. The World Wide Web was born and its father was a guy called Tim Berners Lee.

When you're connected to Internet you're sharing a vast network with hundreds of millions of other users. This shared network provides resources that 15 years ago were never thought possible. Unfortunately when something is shared its open to abuse. On Internet this abuse comes from hackers and virus creators. Their sole intent is to cause chaos and/or harm to your computer system and millions of other computer systems all over world.

How do you combat this? You need an Internet security system. This might sound complicated but your Internet security system will be quite straigtforward being comprised of just 2 - 3 Internet security products. We'll look at each of these products in more detail now:

AntiVirus Software The first and most critical element of your Internet security system is antivirus software. If you don't have up-to-date antivirus software on your PC you're asking for trouble. 300 new viruses appear each month and if you're not constantly protecting your system against this threat your computer will become infected with at least one virus -it's only a matter of time.