Spyware

Datin Zakiah of mine asked me recently how to maximize her personal computer(pc) performance.She said the pc performance is getting slower each day. I told him that there is a spyware in his computer. She is a non-computer savvy, therefore I need to explain to her in simple summary.

What is spyware?
I browsed Google search engine to look for the meaning of SPYWARE. At the bottom of Google result page I found Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Wikipedia stated a spyware differs from neither viruses nor worms. It is designed for a commercial gain such as to studyuser behavior on web browsing for marketing purpose, to delivera pop-up advertisement and etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware).
For me, it is a spy software. In short we call it spyware.. The spyware runs as a secret service in your pc and keeps on tracking your browsing behavior. Then, it will match your behavior pattern to the statistic which resides on its server somewhere in the Internet. After it matched the behavior pattern against the statistic, the spyware will deliver a pop up advertising banner. The pop up advertising banner has a timer, for example, every 5 minutes it will change the banner. This is pretty annoying to your eyes. Imagine the spyware collecting data from the Internet users all around the world. It’s like a research tool to study people and snooping on our Internet activities. She ask me to clean all the spyware with $50 for an hour job :)