Dealing with spyware is crucial for your ID theft protection plan. What exactly is Spyware? The simple answer is that any malicious software collecting your personal information is regarded as Spyware.

More accurately, this software applications group are designed for collection of personal information or the change of the configuration settings of your computer both without your knowledge or your consent. They can be downloaded easily to your computer via an infected file, or planted without your awareness when visiting a web site and/or installed alongside another software application, unknown to you.

Why You Need To Combat Spyware When Starting an ID Theft Protection Plan…

Once installed (unknown to you) on your computer, the spyware can do one of two things: sit quiet and sinister in the background gathering information such as account numbers, usernames, or passwords, or change your computer’s configuration so allowing a hacker to access your machine.

Background gathering by the spyware often is called a keylogger, which is an application that can log each keystroke you make when using your keyboard. When downloaded to your computer, the keyloggers then create a file to store all your keystrokes, so each time you make an Internet connection, a file copy gets sent on to a server elsewhere on the Web. By subsequently downloading that file, criminals can then extract whatever valuable information it may contain.

Imagine a keylogger has managed to get installed on to your computer and you pay your bills online, you order products off a website, and you complete a registration form online; that all could have been collected by the sneaky keylogger. So, the information gets sent along to the criminal’s storage facility, later grabbed and the important stuff separated from it all – passwords, usernames, date-of-birth, credit card numbers and account numbers- then sold on to another criminal for use in a host of varying illegal activities, one of which could be identity theft.

Spyware can even be used to change the configuration settings of your computer. Used in this way, the application is installed (unknown to you) on your computer, which changes the configuration thus allowing the criminal to gain unchecked access, like opening another door to the hard drive, despite protection from firewalls and other security software. Of course this is totally the opposite of effective ID theft protection.

With this facility in place a criminal can hack easily into your computer to access personal information stored there or (this is really insulting) lock you out your own computer to use it connected up to a family of other similarly hi-jacked computers –a botnet –for conducting some other form of criminal activity online. The criminals may even send spyware or other malicious software to other unsuspecting computer users…using your own computer.

Identifying and removing spyware from your computer is merely one step, albeit a very important step in implementing a solid and secure ID theft protection plan. Anything less than that is to open yourself up to the risk of identity theft.

With this facility in place, a criminal can hack easily into your computer to access personal information stored there or lock you out of your own computer to use it connected up to a family of other similarly hi-jacked computers –a botnet –for conducting some other form of criminal activity online. The criminals may even send spyware or other malicious software to other unsuspecting computer users…using your own computer!