10. May 2008 by admin.

I have had many people ask me about the difference between spyware, viruses, trojans, and adware and how to know if you have one.

A word to generalize all of these is malware. Malware is defined by being software that is bad. Unfortunately, we live in a world that everyone has to make a paycheck. As you browse the internet you will find some very cool games, emoticons(those smiley faces for email an instant messaging), and well written software for FREE. We call free software freeware, and the internet is shock full of freeware. How do they make their money though? There are a number of reasons why they could be free. A common reason is it is their hobby, I have written a few peices of software in my short life and it has mainly been for my enjoyment. Another reason is sponsorship. Some programs will display an ad in their software and the advertiser will pay the program decent money for doing so, but these days I see this less and less. One of the most common trends for sponsoring freeware is to include another program that you do not necessarily know about. I say necessarily because in a perfect world we would read the license agreement. Here is a quote from a piece of software including adware/spyware please note many companies get angry and sue happy when people call them spyware or adware manufactures, so to protect the non-innocent I’ve replaced the company name with “company xyz”:

“*COMPANY XYZ* offers some of the most popular software available on the Internet free of charge (”*COMAPANY XYZ* Supported Software”) in exchange for your agreement to also install *COMAPANY XYZ* AdServer software (”*COMPANY XYZ*”), which will display Pop-Up, Pop-Under, and other types of ads on your computer based on the information we collect as stated in this Privacy Statement. We refer to consumers who have *COMPANY XYZ* on their system as ‘Subscribers.’ ”

This agreement was most likely was included with that Awsome screensaver showing thrilling pictures of the Himalayas that we were so excited to install we didn’t think twice about and skipped our research. By agreeing to that one you’d now have a company collecting personal information about your computing habits (that is the definition of SPYware, because it is literally SPYING on you!!) I deduce this from the statement “based on the information we collect as stated in this Privacy Statement” Furthermore… “AdServer software (”*COMPANY XYZ*”), which will display Pop-Up, Pop-Under, and other types of ads on your computer” Ever get a pop-up ad when your not even browsing the internet? I’d be worried, this is exactly what they are claiming to do. Many websites, will include advertisements, and that is fair there is a cost associated with keeping a webpage up and their are many programs out their to prevent them from popping them out of your browser. However when you are in your word processor typing up an important document and ads start popping up and your internet browser starts going ballistic you most likely have adware. Sadly in this software’s case it’s probably because it picked up on a few words about toothpaste in the document you were typing and wants you to buy company x’s toothpaste.

So with all that said, adware is defined as software that will popup ads. Spyware is defined as a software that monitors your computer usage and is typically sent back to a computer that spits out marketing research.

So what is the big deal??? Other then a stranger spying on you?

Here it is: In order to write a software to monitor your habits it will have to embed itself very well into your system, unfortunatly the people who write these programs do an awfull job and they will slow your system way down. You computer is not designed to echo every move you make. A lot of computers end up crashing and getting bluescreen errors and dll missing errors all because of poorly written spyware or adware, sometimes so much that their computer ends up getting dog slow and sometimes will not even boot. This is probably about 90% of the cases of a suddenly slow computer(that or a virus could be on there). All in all if your computer is suddenly slow and doesn’t run anything like it used to you might have some spyware, adware or a virus on there. Now is all freeware bad? No, as we discussed earlier there are legitimate programmers that just give back to the community or do it as a hobby. There is one site I know that will check their software links before offering it claiming it is spyware free. That site is http://www.download.com. If you are wanting to go clicker happy and download freeware I would go there. Otherwise do a google search on what you are looking to download read a few reviews. If all the articles that come up contain the word Spyware I would grow suspicious. Also ask a technician such as myself, we are on the internet like no one else and may have heard of the software title before.

Hopefully this article has helped answer some of your questions, if you have more or want to know more send me an email at podcast@micromendtech.com

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29. March 2008 by admin.

I am pleased to announce I am releasing the first Podcast from MicroMend Technologies. What this podcast will do is allow people to email in there questions and get a free response through our podcast. For questions or comments for the show email podcast@micromendtech.com.

Click Here: Subscribe Now Free With Itunes!

If you don’t have Itunes, download it here. Or Listen Online Here

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29. March 2008 by admin.

Good morning Utah! It’s a wonderful early Saturday morning, the sun hasn’t quite come up yet but I am! I’m sure any of our regular visitors will notice the brand new look of our website. No worries, we haven’t been hacked. We’re just updating things, making things new. Periodically I’ll be posting news and events going on and posting a few hints and tips to make your life a little easier in the computer world. For those of you who are new, MicroMend Technologies LLC provides Utah county with experienced and affordable computer repair service. Our prices start as low as $49 per incident!! Give us a call today at 801-623-9129.

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