Chapter 8
5 Reasons NOT to Panic (Why are naughty pictures popping up?)
There are few things more disturbing than to have something extremely inappropriate spring up on your computer. Unfortunately, this might happen.
Pornographic Popups
You are happily surfing along, when suddenly a naughty picture pops up in all its lurid glory!
Where could such a thing come from? What sites have your kids been on, any way?
It is quite likely that nobody has been to any "adult" websites at all. Many uninvited popups are caused by spyware.
In Chapter 5, we discussed spyware protection. If you have not yet installed the two recommended anti-spyware applications (as well as taken the rest of the security steps), please do so as soon as possible. It takes about twenty minutes for an unsecured, unpatched Windows computer to get infected through an internet connection, even if it's dialup!
There is a very good chance that your naughty popups are spyware-induced. Kill the spyware, you kill the popups. Additionally, Opera and Firefox come with built-in popup killers, and the Google Search Bar will provide you the same capability with IE.
The idea of spyware is particularly galling to me. When I first ventured onto the internet, it still had an atmosphere of open trust. You could install applications that you downloaded directly from the author's websites with no fear of unwelcome additions. As of this writing, Spyware-Guide (http://www.spywareguide.com) listed 1516 different programs that do things like creating popups, hijacking your browser's start page, intercepting your searches, recording your keystrokes, and even sending spam from YOUR machine! A large percentage of these programs are "add-ons" to supposedly legitimate applications.
Before you download and install anything, I would recommend a visit to the aforementioned Spyware-Guide website to see if the application is listed as spyware.
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