PSA: clean your machine

The other day I was at visited my folks and they asked about the anti-virus software I had previously installed (I reassured them that the pop-ups and all that activity were perfectly normal and that the software was just doing its job and probably caught something malicious).

Which further reminded me to come home and run a spyware check since I hadn't done so in a while. 220 days, to be exact, according to Lavasoft's Ad-Aware. I tend to believe I run a fairly clean machine. I don't visit new web-sites very often. I don't install a lot of demo software (and when I do it's from a reputable source like Gamespot). In general, I haven't had any attacks in years.


But oh I was in for a surprise - turns out that not only did Ad-Aware pick up something, but so did Spybot. Most were cookies, but there were a couple of cases classified as "critical." The point is, don't become a spy-ware snob like I did: run the scans every few months. It doesn't take long - maybe 15 minutes at most. That's like saying, let the scans run while you go take a shower and get changed or something. Really, it's not that big an effort to put in to keep the dangers of lost performance or bandwidth at bay.