Some of the symptoms of having spyware lurking in your hard-drive somewhere include: A sudden decrease in the speed of your computer without any known reason or being bombarded with unsolicited popup advertising that is usually of gambling or adult in nature. These problems may continue even after thoroughly checking your computer and even running your anti-virus software.

Nowadays there are equal and even greater threats to viruses and they include spyware, adware, spybots, keyloggers, malware, hijackers, trojans, trackers, cookies and phishing threats. These are all very dangerous and threaten your privacy and identity.

Spyware is mainly used to spy on your online activity. The owners of the spyware software will use this data to compile a marketing profile about you and can then send you targeted offers or sell your information to third parties without your consent or knowledge. Spyware completely breaches your right to browse the internet in privacy.

Adware on the other hand, usually comes bundled up with shareware and freeware software. They are mostly consensual, however some can get installed in your PC without your knowledge. Adware is usually responsible for showing annoying ads directly on your computer. More aggressive forms of spyware infection will even show annoying ads on your computer at startup.

The most malicious types of spyware are often referred to as malware or keyloggers. These programs are used by criminals who try to steal your sensitive details or information such as bank details or website passwords by recording everything you type on your keyboard and then that data gets sent to their computers.

It has been said that out of every 10 computers, 9 of them are infected with some form of spyware. To make sure your privacy and information is not at risk, you need to periodically run a spyware removal program at least once a week to detect any new security breaches to your computer system.

It is advisable to choose an anti-spyware utility that has been tested thoroughly by many independent sources. You should stay away from any product that supposedly claims to have recieved awards from unverifiable sources, or ones that are unknown and have no reputation.

The most important aspect of a spyware remover is that is updated rapidly after new threats are found. Unkown programs may lack the professional service you need with this kind of software. The longer it takes for a company to update their software, the more chance you have of being infected by the new risks.

Experts agree that you should scan your system completely daily or at the minimum, weekly, because new spyware threats are released and circulated daily and can quickly infect your PC. There are already thousands of damaging files on the internet so having quality anti-spyware software is now just as, if not more important that having an antivirus program.