Knowing What A Trojan Horse Is
Just like the original Trojan Horse that was built by the Greeks, the Trojan Horse Virus for your computer is actually something that is evil and bad concealed within something that seems good and positive. For anyone that might not know, a quick history lesson, the original Trojan Horse was given as a gift to the City of Troy by the Greeks who were losing the war but within this large wooden horse that was rolled into the gates of Troy was the Greek Army that came out at night when no one was looking and destroyed the city.
The computer virus variety of the Trojan Horse was first discovered in 2002 within sendmail and OpenSSH packages both included the Trojan Horse. It was done by a hijacker that broke into the distribution sites and replaced the software with his own damaged and infected ones. That is one way that your system can be given a Trojan, through software downloads and installation.
However, the most common way that users are infected with a Trojan program is through the spreading of it through emails. The sender will send it to the recipient within an email attachment that might say something like “nudegirls.jpg” or something along those lines that will make you curious and open the file.
Another increasingly popular way that Trojan Horses have been spread to users is through the ever increasing instant messenger programs such as Yahoo Messenger, AIM, ICQ, MSN messenger, and IRC. The one key to remember about Trojans is that they have to be triggered by some mechanism and will not spread themselves. For example, you can have one in your email but you do not open the link then it will not mess with your system.
A Trojan Horse, once on your system can do several things. First, it has the ability to completely take over your system and not give you access to any of your files. Next, it could possibly search your computer and monitor your usernames and passwords to various sites and even has the chances of getting your credit card numbers and sending all this information back to the creator.
The best way to keep your system from receiving any type of Trojan Horse is that of prevention. Never open files sent you by people you do not know because chances are that not only are these messages SPAM email but will contain some sort of link or file that will create a Trojan on your machine. It is fine to run anti-virus program on a daily basis but the fact is that Trojans are created so often that your definitions for viruses might not recognize the newest Trojans that have been created.
Trojans are not the kind of program that you want to speculate with so you should get your computer checked right away and continue to be leery of opening files by users you do not trust.
When not on his soapbox, Andrew Wroblewski is doing battle with the thousands of spyware programs that can affect you via his ant-spyware and spyware removal website: http://spyware.pcwash.com where you can get a free spyware scan of your computer system.
Tags: spam, spyware, trojan dialer, trojan horse, trojan virusAdware Why is it Different
Advertising supported software, which has come to be more commonly referred to as adware, is a computer program and/or package of software under which advertisements or other marketing material are included or are just loaded automatically and played back to you over and over again after they install themselves. The main way that users are made aware that they have adware on their systems is through banner ads that appear in pop-up windows or a bar that might just appear on your computer screen.
The main reason that adware became as rampant as it did was that in the beginning it helped some developers recover the costs incurred during program development. Often times this was done with a disclaimer stating that if you use the reduced price option for this program, then you will receive periodic pop-up ads from sponsors. Another avenue for adware is under the category of shareware, which is where the user may download and operate an unregistered copy of a program for use completely free and receive pop-ups, or the user can choose to pay a fee and receive the full version free of any pop-ups. This is method is kind of like a status program, meaning the higher up you are the more benefits you receive.
There are some forms of adware that have been accused of including some sort of tracking code that monitors and reports a users habits online, thus making it a variable form of spyware. Other than these spyware types of programs, adware programs do not invisibly and unknown to you collect your data for reporting purposes.
This is where spyware and adware differ and that is the fact that adware does not purposely harm your system of confidence, where spyware while you have no idea it may be on your machine can gather personal and sensitive information about your identity and send it to third party sources.
While it may not be as harmful as spyware and Trojan programs, adware might be the most annoying of the three. There is nothing like surfing the Internet and have to close six pop-ups just because you wanted to check your email.
There are many programs available for free that will scan your system and help repair and remove any form of adware you have on your system. While most adware programs are merely a nuisance, there are those rare varieties that my still do harm to your system so proper maintenance is the key to a healthy system.
When not on his soapbox, Andrew Wroblewski is doing battle with the thousands of spyware programs that can affect you via his ant-spyware and spyware removal website: http://spyware.pcwash.com where you can get a free spyware scan of your computer system.
Tags: adaware, adware, anti spyware, malware, spy ware, spyware, trojan horse
