Getting Help: Viruses & Spyware
What would it be like if you turned on your computer one morning and found that a virus had corrupted your hard disk and all your files were lost? Since computers are generally reliable, we tend to take them for granted. We hear stories about friends or colleagues who have suffered with a computer virus, but we think it will never happen to us. Chances are, it will. You can prevent data loss from a virus by using virus protection software.
Computer viruses are programs that operate without your knowledge or consent. They are written to spread from computer to computer, just as biological viruses spread from person to person. Many viruses are not designed to do any harm, although they may, simply by taking up space on your computer; some are designed to flash humorous or political messages on your screen, while others maliciously destroy your files.
Your computer can get a virus from an infected program on a diskette, an email attachment, or by downloading an infected file from a server on campus or over the Internet. If your computer is infected, it can act as a source for spreading the infection to other computers.
Some warning signs that you may have a virus are unexplained beeping, disappearing files, damaged files that cannot be opened, or frequent crashes. You can prevent viruses from infecting your system by installing one of many anti-virus software packages. At the College of Wooster, Sophos Anti-Virus is installed on all college-owned Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Macintosh OS X computers. The college also provides Sophos for use on all student computers (again, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Macintosh OS X). To download Sophos Anti-Virus, please proceed to our Software Downloads & Documentation page.
Akin to computer viruses are adware and spyware. According to Wikipedia...
Most spyware is adware in a different sense: it displays advertising. Claria Corporation's Gator Software and Exact Advertising's BargainBuddy are examples. Visited Web sites frequently install Gator on client machines in a surreptitious manner, and it directs revenue to the installing site and to Claria by displaying advertisements to the user. The user receives many pop-up advertisements.
Other spyware behavior, such as reporting on websites the user visits, occurs in the background. The data is used for "targeted" advertisement impressions. The prevalence of spyware has cast suspicion upon other programs that track Web browsing, even for statistical or research purposes. Some observers describe the Alexa Toolbar, an Internet Explorer plug-in published by Amazon.com, as spyware (and some anti-spyware programs report it as such).[citation needed] Many users, however, choose to install it.[citation needed]
Similarly, software bundled with free, advertising-supported programs such as P2P act as spyware, (and if removed disable the 'parent' program) yet people are willing to download it. This presents a dilemma for proprietors of anti-spyware products whose removal tools may inadvertently disable wanted programs. These recent test results show how a bundled software (WhenUSave) is ignored by popular anti spyware program AdAware, (but removed as spyware by most scanners) because it is part of the popular (but recently decommissioned) Edonkey client. To address this dilemma, the Anti-Spyware Coalition has been working on building consensus within the anti-spyware industry as to what is and isn't acceptable software behavior. To accomplish their goal, this group of anti-spyware companies, academics, and consumer groups have collectively published a series of documents including a definition of spyware, risk model, and best practices document.
