This really chapped my lips...

I recently bought a new computer. Mine was getting old, had lost 
its whistle, and the few remaining bells didn't ding a nicely 
as they had in the past. Yep, it was time for a new state-of-the 
art dream machine with CD burner, DVD player, a bazillion 
gigabyte drive and more RAM than Rambo has. I whipped out my 
trusty credit card and told my local CompUSA to ring it up.

Well, needless to say I was enthralled. Blazing speed, working 
whistles, and bells that were more like the Big Ben gong! I 
could tear through spreadsheets with one CD-ROM tied behind my 
back. One day, about three months later, my Son came home from 
college. Having heard all about my new pride and joy, he sat 
down behind the keyboard and fired that puppy up. He put it 
through its paces for about 30 minutes and then turned and said 
'It's nice Dad, but I thought it would be faster'. HE THOUGHT IT 
WOULD BE FASTER? What was he, crazy? This box was so hot that it 
came with it's own fire department.

Then he started poking around the hard drive. 'Dad', he said, 
'You need an exterminator. Your PC is infested.' 'Infested with 
what, bugs?'. 'Nope', he said 'Spyware'. 'Spy What?'. 'Spyware', 
he replied. And then he explained.

Even thought I had a good virus prevention utility installed, it 
didn't protect me against Spyware. Spyware, it seeks, are nasty 
little programs that get downloaded in similar fashion to the 
way a virus does. It can be attached to an email, or even one of 
those new talking E-Cards. it can hide in one of those 'Click 
Here to close this window' boxes, or in any of seemingly a 
hundred other secret ways.

There are essentially two types of Spyware. The less dangerous 
type either causes lots of ads to pop up every time you go on 
the Internet, or records your shopping and surfing habits in 
order to report them back to Big Brother somewhere. Of course, 
these steal your PC's clock cycles, and cause your hard drive to 
get bloated, which ends up slowing your entire system down. The 
problem is, the loss of speed is gradual and you don't even know 
it's happening until Mr. Big Shot college kid comes along and 
tells you that your PC is slow.

OK, that's bad enough. But then, there is the second kind of 
Spyware. They are used by real spies, or at least the kind that 
want to steal your credit card and personal information so they 
can clean out your bank accounts and assume your identity. You 
know, the scary stuff that you're starting to hear about more 
and more.

So, what should I do? Did I need to reformat my hard drive? I 
hoped not because THAT was no walk in the park. Fortunately my 
college geek was up on the subject and took me to a website that 
specialized in safely removing Spyware. We downloaded and 
installed the software in just a few minutes and then fired it 
up. Holey Schmolie, I was infested. After about 15 minutes of 
chunking and plunking, the software pronounced me fit and clean. 
Well, at least my PC was. We rebooted and Boom! All of the speed 
and performance that had gradually been lost slammed right back 
into life. Even my Son was impressed.

Folks, this Spyware is serious stuff. You can't afford to be 
wiped out by some cyber terrorist half way across the world. 
Protect your PC and your identity. You probably already are 
infested. There's only one way to know for sure, you need to 
check it out for yourself.