A spyware removal program is, naturally, a program designed to remove malicious spyware from a computer. Unfortunately we live with an online world where innocence and trust struggle to exist. There are many who would rather take what they can in any way they can. One way they do this is to spy on you from inside your own computer and steal whatever they can find. You may be surprised at just how easy it can be too.

Most of us with computers are connected to the Internet all the time or at least part of the time. This makes us potentially vulnerable to outside threats. Most of us know this so we install a firewall and email virus protection. For many of us that's enough. We don't have a spyware removal program. Occasionally the firewall tells us it has blocked a threat, and occasionally the virus protection picks up something nasty too. We feel safe.

Meanwhile, completely invisible to us, a spyware program has managed to intrude. It may be one of the less harmful ones, or it may be a very nasty one. Let's imagine it's a Trojan that can record every keystroke you make on the keyboard, and completely unaware of the situation you have decided to check your online bank balance...

You trust your online banking facility. You have a good username and password that no one is ever going to guess. You're right, but with a Trojan successfully implanted in your computer, they don't have to guess! When you type in your details the spyware program records it and passes the information to the owner of the program. Next time you check your bank balance you are in for a shock!

You need a spyware removal program in addition to a firewall and virus protection. In fact, you need several different spyware removal programs. Each one should be good at picking up different things. No one program is perfect, but several together can complement each other and pick up most of the spyware.

The best way to use a spyware removal program is to let it scan the system and report on what it finds. Expect it to find some spyware. It will probably be fairly harmless stuff, but get rid of it nevertheless. Then re-boot your system and scan again with the same program, deleting whatever it finds again. Do that until it reports the computer clean. Then start up a different spyware removal program and do the process all over again.

Yes, it takes a lot of time, but buying a new computer and setting it up the way you want it will take even more time and expense. That's what you'll end up doing if you let spyware run rampant, and it will if you don't do something about it.

None of the protection you have on your computer is perfect. The firewall will occasionally miss things. The virus protection will miss things too. It happens. You can help these programs by keeping all the definitions completely up to date at all times and scanning the system at regular intervals of no more than a week apart. It really is worth it.