Like hazards on the roads we drive and travel on, there are also hazards when you want to travel the internet. There’s a lot of good information out there, however, there’s a lot of people that want to disrupt your experience. It’s unfortunate, but if you equip yourself with some good tools, you’ll be prepared and will be able to get around those problems, and go where you need to go.

There are many different hazards out there, and they can generally be classified into four basic groups. Viruses/Trojan Horses, Adware, Spyware, and Network Worms.

Viruses and Trojan Horses are types of software that gets on your computer, usually by tricking you in some fashion, and will do different things depending on what the writer wants it to do. Once the virus gets onto your computer, it has a variety of methods that it uses to spread itself to other computers.

Lately, Viruses (and Trojan Horses) have been found to perform:
- Mass mailing of advertising e-mails (usually known as “spam’)
- Making a collection of infected machines perform actions that may bring down computer services on the internet (typically called a ‘Distributed denial of service’ attack)
- Collecting information from people’s computer – gathering personal information, like credit card information and passwords.

What is Adware?

Adware is software that gets on your computer, and is there to download advertisements and show them to you each chance it gets. Some Adware writers get paid money each and every time an advertisement pops up on your monitor. Because Adware is the way many people make their living, they write software that will ingrain itself so deep into the operating system, removing some Adware will cause damage to your operating system.

What is Spyware?

Some people tend to use the terms of Adware and Spyware in place of one or the other. They tend to do similar things to your computer, however, they are actually quite different.

Spyware is software that keeps track of what you do on your computer. Spyware will monitor where you go, what you download, what you watch and listen to, and reports that gathered information to marketing agencies.
If companies wrote this Spyware software properly, you probably wouldn’t know it was even on your computer – but most times it is not written very well. This Spyware has to fit itself in the middle of your internet setup, on your computer, to monitor all that traffic. When that software is badly written, it causes problems.

What are Network Worms?

Network Worms take advantage of flaws in the operating system and programs on your computer. If software updates are not downloaded and installed often enough, you’re leaving the computer wide open for a Worm to install itself on your computer.

How do you get Viruses/Trojan Horses?

Typically, most viruses are either sent via e-mail attachments, files sent from on person to another through instant messaging programs (MSN Messenger, ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger), or mislabelled files on music and file sharing networks.

Some Viruses are so tricky, they will scan your computer for e-mail addresses. It will use those addresses and the virus will send itself to any address it finds. Potentially, that e-mail from your friend could be a virus in disguise.

How do you get Adware and Spyware?

Many times, file and music sharing software will have Adware and Spyware that come along for the ride when they get installed. Also, some software that claims to remove Adware and Spyware are actually Adware and Spyware delivery agents in disguise. Other software, like free toolbars and ‘Internet Optimizer’ type of programs also bring along Adware and Spyware.

How do you get Network Worms?

Network worms take advantage of flaws in the operating system and programs on the computer. If software updates are not downloaded and installed often enough, you’re leaving the computer wide open for a Worm to install itself on your computer.

How to protect yourself from these types of hazards:

Viruses/ Trojan Horses:
Good – Free antivirus software (AVG, Avast), ISP provided AntiVirus software (ZoneAlarm Security Suite, Shaw Secure)
Better – Commercial Antivirus products (Norton Antivirus, Mcafee VirusScan, Panda TruPrevent, Eset NOD32)

Adware and Spyware:
Good – Freeware scanners (Ad-Aware Personal Edition, Spybot: Search & Destroy)
Better – Scanners with real-time protection (Microsoft AntiSpyware note: Microsoft AntiSpyware only runs on windows 2000 and XP)

Network Worms:
Good – Firewall Software (ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall v5.6)
Better – Hardware Router (if it’s a wireless router, make sure it’s secured properly – but that’s for a future Powerland Magazine Article) and, most importantly, update software with latest patches/updates and update Windows through Windows Update.

Almost all of these threats take advantage of flaws in Microsoft operating systems. Windows is the most popular operating system on the planet and that makes it a big target. Other types of computers, like the Apple Macintosh, and other operating systems, like Linux and FreeBSD, are currently free of almost all the problems listed in this article. However, once other computer platforms become more and more popular, you can bet that similar problems will show up on those computers.

Being well protected and being aware of the big potential problems that you might come across is half the battle. With some good hardware and software, you’ll be ready for any type of hazard you come across - and that will make for a better Internet experience each time you log on.

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