Products target spyware, adware

Plenty of software can help you eradicate the spyware and adware on your computer -- both for free or for bucks. But the way these aids go about expunging this pernicious clutter is changing.

McAfee Security has just debuted a product that will make trolling for pesky adware and miscreant spyware an automatic, no-hands procedure.

The computer security company has had spyware and adware protection on its Viruscan package. McAfee, a division of Network Solutions, is now distributing an anti-spyware product that does not require you to remember to scan your system for the pests.

The National Cybersecurity Alliance last May estimated that 91 percent of users have spyware on their computers, much of it acquired by using file-sharing programs for music.

Spyware is software that inhabits your computer without your knowledge, and it is launched by those who want to track your surfing patterns online. Some can hijack your passwords and credit card numbers. Type on the keyboard and they know what you're typing. It's elusive and undetectable by the common user.

"The people who write this stuff have the intent of making it hard to find, yet it reveals what they want to know," said Fred Cohen, an analyst with Burton Group.

Adware is the same technique but adapted by marketers who want to know what your retail preferences are. Where do you shop? What do you buy?

But unlike spyware, you have given the adware makers permission to track your online buying behavior when you download software without, likely as not, having read the fine print.

For free, a user can download Spybot ( www.safer-networking.org and Ad-Aware ( www.lavasoftusa.com to protect a computer. Or buy one of the major security brand names, such as Norton Anti-Virus and

McAfee VirusScan, that attack these problems. In all these cases, the user has to remember to launch the tool manually.

You know the routine: Friday night. Oh yes, time to do some computer housekeeping. Get that spyware.

But between Fridays, your information is being sent over the Internet to God-knows-whom.

Furthermore, many of these standard remedies, after scanning your system, will present you with a list of files for you to erase. But do you really understand what you're deleting? And do you delete without question?

McAfee's recently released Anti-Spyware package for $40 works automatically, according to Bryson Gordon, product manager for McAfee Security, Consumer Division, at Network Associates.

"Rather than showing you hundreds of files and components associated with spyware, we can identify the names of spyware applications," and remove them automatically in the background, Gordon said. So the user is actually unaware of the protection taking place -- very much as the most advanced virus protection occurs.

Analyst Cohen was ho-hum about McAfee's product. The technique McAfee is now offering has been around for a while, he said. What's interesting is that a company as large as McAfee is now in the game.

"Whenever a big corporation goes after something, you immediately know it's risen to a level they can effectively accommodate," Cohen said.

And indeed, automatic tracking and expunging of your spyware and adware has been offered for at least two years by a small Florida company, STOPzilla ( www.stopzilla.com

Robert Deignan, STOPzilla's business development director, said with some exasperation about McAfee's product debut, "They've automated a product so it works proactively. Here we are two years old and much smaller and have had an automated solution all along."

STOPzilla's modus operandi is to suppress the pop-up ads associated with the spyware and adware.

"We've determined the difference between solicited and unsolicited windows," he said -- the unsolicited ones being pop-ups. "We let through the solicited ones."

After 15-day trial period, STOPzilla costs $30. The Web site says it is currently offering a $10 mail-in rebate.

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