EarthLink: Too much spyware

The average Net-connected PC has 26 spyware programs on it, EarthLink, one of the US's largest Internet service providers, has found. That's unwanted malicious software on computers like yours and mine. "Spyware programs hide in PCs and secretly monitor user activity. Typically, spyware arrives bundled with freeware or shareware, or through email or instant messages. The programs are difficult to remove and may cause computers to run slowly or even crash," CNET reports. EarthLink worked with PC security company Webroot to scan more than 3 million computers between January and last month, finding 83 million instances of spyware." For anti-spyware help and a family perspective on the spyware problem, see "Spyware & an 8-year-old," 7/09, and SpywareInfo.com. Two popular free spyware-detect-and-destroy programs are Spybot and Ad-Aware; download them at Download.com and Tucows, respectively.