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Like it or not, spyware is with us to stay; spyware authors and coders have found it all too useful and profitable to install the software on your machine. Some of it is relatively harmless; others, extremely harmful to your computing experiences.

Your homepage can be hijacked, your user preferences can be changed, and people can literally spy on you from afar. They can possibly tell what you did on the Internet as well as what applications you used, too. Some malware can “phone home” personal, confidential information like Social Security Numbers and passwords.

So how do you know you have spyware on your PC? The most effective way is to run a scan on your PC with a spyware detection tool like Spyware Doctor. This software, a winner of several personal computer magazine awards, can not only detect spyware and other malicious code, it can remove them as well as block recurring or new spyware from installation on your PC!

The first step, though, is to find out if you’ve been infected. There are a number of free and pay-for anti-spyware tools on the market. Simply go to google.com to find Adaware or Spybot. We suggest that you use both because no spyware detection utility can detect 100% of the known spyware in the wild.

Second, you must remove the spyware. This generally requires a little patience, but not usually anything more than that. In fact, most spyware removal tools will remove the spyware it finds for free.

Third, you’ll want to take preventive measures to ensure that spyware doesn’t infect your system again. For this, you generally will have to pay for a product that inoculates your PC against known spyware.

Fortunately, most spyware removal utilities are inexpensive. For example, the aforementioned Spyware Doctor is less than $30. Quite a cheap price for peace of mind and a smooth-running PC!