Anti Spy Software - SpyCop

The word 'spyware' is currently used to describe two types of software:

1. Advertising supported software. Recently some software authors have attempted to give their software to users free of charge supporting it with advertising (similar to banner ads on webpages). They often use third-party software to display the advertisements and, in order to show advertising messages that are relevant to the user, this software sometimes monitors their internet usage.

2. Covert surveillance software. This is software that is secretly installed on a computer that records activity such as keystrokes, applications used, web sites visited. It has the sole purpose of spying on others' computer activities.

This short article deals with the more worrying of these these types of software - covert surveillance software.

What can these programs monitor?

Each surveillance program is different but most of them follow the same pattern.

• Visual logging (Screenshots): The software captures the contents of the screen regularly, at a pre-defined interval.
  
  
• Website logging: The url (web address) of every web page visited is recorded.
  
  
• Keypress logging: Every keystroke is recorded allowing the recovery of user names, passwords and any other text that the spy is interested in.
  
  
• Application logging: Running applications and their window titles are recorded. The spy software will often produce a report showing which applications were used and for how long.
  
  
• Chat logging: Both sides of instant messaging or 'chat' conversations are recorded.
  

Who would want to spy on me?

Anyone who may want to keep an eye on you, including your Boss, Spouse, Company Employees, Ex-lover, hackers and criminals can easily learn more about you then you would ever want. Spy software makes it easy for anybody to get your financial information, credit card numbers, and web site passwords! SpyCop will search your system for these programs and optionally disable them for you.

A recent worrying phenomenon is that of 'identity theft' - a person pretends to be someone else for the purposes of criminal activities. Recently in the UK a school teacher was arrested for using his credit card to access a website containing images of child pornography. When the police fully investigated the matter (some months later) it turned out that a colleague of the teacher, the school's IT manager, had stolen the teacher's credit card and personal details and used them to access this web site.

How can this software get onto my computer?

There are three main ways to install surveillance software.

• The spy has access to your computer, has logged on and installed the software.
  
  
• Your computer is part of a network. When you log on to the network a 'logon script' is executed installing the spy software. You may hear of this being referred to as 'remote deployment'.
  
  
• A 'trojan horse'. You receive a piece of software purporting to be something else, often a joke or something humorous. This software secretly installs the surveillance application.
  
  

Is this type of software easy to get hold of?

Unfortunately - yes. There are now hundreds of vendors creating spy software. It is being aggressively marketed, often using emotive sales copy ("Did you know that your husband/wife/employees are cheating on you..." etc.) You may have received 'spam' emails yourself offering you this type of software. Most of this software sells in the price range of $20 to $150 though some of it is even free!

These programs claim to be invisible. Is this true?

No program is totally invisible however, surveillance software is intended to be secret and so is often very difficult to detect. You can be assured that it will not:

• Show an icon on the desktop or start menu
• Display a window when running
• Show in the system tray
• Show in the task manager list of running applications

Will my virus checker detect this software?

No. Although a virus checker may detect some types of surveillance software, especially if it has been associated with a 'trojan' type of virus, it will not detect all spy programs. You need to use a specialist solution such as SpyCop.

What can I do to protect myself?

Install SpyCop on your computer. SpyCop will search your system for computer monitoring spy programs and optionally disable them so the spying stops. If spy software is present on your system, the next step is to figure who would want to spy on you and, if appropriate, confront them about it.