Expert: Carolyn Meinel - 7/29/2008

Question
HELLO
         DID YOU EVER NOTICE THE LONG LICENSE AGREEMENT IN SOFTWARE THAT YOU INSTALL. ARE YOU ACTUALLY AGREEING TO LET THEM SPY ON YOU AND YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE AGREEEING TO   WHAT WORDS DO I LOOK FOR IN THE LICENSE AGREEMENT THAT HAVE THIS MALICIOUS AGREEMENT

Answer
That is a VERY wise question. Some of those agreements really do have you giving permission to get spied upon and are one of the main reasons that spyware and adware gets installed in your computer, and why antivirus programs don't remove them.

Because these agreements are written by lawyers who have no morals whatsoever, they are worded so slyly that it is impossible for anyone but another evil to the bone lawyer to figure out what's in them.

However, we are in luck because there are programs that are kept up to date by brilliant researchers who discover every new way the spyware and adware designers figure out how to trick people into installing them. If you install a complete Internet security suite in your computer, you should be pretty safe.

If you aren't already using one, you can download either Kapersky Internet Security, which offers a free 30 day trial at http://kapersky.com or F-Secure's Complete Internet security suite, which offers a free thirty day trial: https://store.f-secure.com/cgi-bin/dlreg/ml=EN?ID=FSISTB&desid=TRIAL

Be sure to uninstall your current antivirus before installing one of these, as they will conflict with each other. If you like one of these then you can get the paid version.

Or you could do what I do. I run an antivirus program (Norton Corporate Edition) and then on top of it run Zone Alarm Pro, and I only use Firefox for browsing (free from Mozilla.org).