Spyware Blockers

Fiction material as it may sound, spywares are used for the basic purpose of spying, where illegally obtained sensitive data and captured "patterns" and "trends" in the user's website navigation are collected and used by highly-driven companies for the advantage of their business.

Spyware authors are paid by some companies to deliberately exploit online revenue applications of business-to-business or e-commerce websites, redirecting profit (page views or rankings and product clicks) into their sites. There are also those who, prompted by their super egos, made it a mission to exploit the frailty and vulnerability of highly-profitable computer firms like Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.

But like any popular fiction material, good always triumphs over evil. In the case of spyware, there are spyware blockers to the rescue. Spyware blockers are legitimate programs used to block the entry of a spyware into a network system or an individual PC, remove it on an infected PC, "disinfect" the system and install anti-spyware tools to identify possible spyware and block it from entering the computer's system in the future.

With huge sums of investments lost due to spyware, commercial firms collaborated with computer programmers to come up with spyware blockers. Ad-Aware SE by Lavasoft and Spybot - Search & Destroy are two of the most acclaimed spyware blockers.

As the most common target of spyware attacks, Microsoft invests on a continuing anti-spyware development program in collaboration with other software companies to protect its products from spyware risks and attacks and protect millions of Windows operating sytems (OS) users from this nuisance. These spyware blockers include the Windows AntiSpyware Beta (for Win XP and Win 2003), later renamed as Windows Defender (for Vista) which are free downloads, and the Windows Live OneCare (fee-based).

Likewise, leading anti-virus companies like McAffee, Symantec, Trend Micro and Grisoft (AVG) have also come up with their own anti-spyware tools, as well as embedding spyware blocking features into their existing anti-virus products.