Ads and popups can clog system with innocent click

In running a computer repair business, I think I am seeing more PCs in a typical week than the average bear. And some trends are emerging that I think are really disturbing.

The spyware and adware people really are ruining the computing experience for a lot of us.

I was looking back at some columns from years ago (I am going on my 11th year, I think) after someone approached me about compiling them for a book. And it is really amazing how far the creeps have gotten.

I wrote an entire column about how it was impossible to get a virus via e-mail without opening an attachment and how you could not get a virus just by browsing to a Web site.

Thanks to the preview pane in Outlook and Outlook Express and thanks to some ingenious coding, both of those statements are now false. After returning a computer to a grateful customer, more often than not they will ask, "How did all of this junk even get on my PC?"

And more often than not, it was not something they did intentionally. A pop-up will jump out and say, "You have spyware on your PC! Click here to remove it." Many people will do just that, and WHAMMO you're infected. More infections will build on those, and pretty soon your PC is unusable thanks to hundreds of pop-ups or slowed down to a crawl via tons of spyware.

Even pop-up blockers like the excellent one built into the Google toolbar now are being circumvented by these spamming morons. My middle-school son borrowed my laptop to look up something for school (sitting on the couch next to me) and not 10 minutes had passed before my PC was infected with the Cool Web Search spyware, which takes over your browser and redirects all of your search queries to porn, gambling and other junk sites.

Was it his fault? No. One of the sites he visited for math homework had a popup that asked if he wanted to scan the machine for spyware. He clicked "no" (instead of the X in the corner to close it), and we were infected.

Removing it is no big deal if you're comfortable with the Windows registry and some of the current tools out there. But what percentage of the computing population is that?

I have to wonder how many people are running screaming to Apple products just for this scourge alone.

WEEKLY WEB WONDER: The excellent AdAware Personal is a free program to rid your PC of ads and popups. Try it at www.lavasoft.de.

---

James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair company, and a computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com.