A Russian butcher once asked that of me, but I'll spare you that old boring story. I know why all of qball.org readers are here, for this week's DL. This DL is a great compliment to a previous DL (about eight months ago) in working to destroy all that spyware, or hidden reporting programs (usually), are hidden in a lot of applications found on the internet. Therefore, it is always good to do a monthly or so check, depending on how many DLs you perform, on your system. Along with Ad-aware, a user should also run Spybot S&D to help eliminate all possible spyware programs.

These two programs help search, immunize, and protect your system from future spyware programs. Spybot (Search and Destroy) has a simple interface for even the novice to run and remove foul applications. What is a great feature of Spybot is that once files are found, it does its best to describe the type and function of the detected program. This program even provides the ability to protect from intrustion of know spyware with a simple click. Therefore, be sure to update the database file (an option in the programs) for both Spybot and Ad-aware when you download them.

So, go forth and surf with a little more security and confidence. Note: qball.org provides DLs that do not contain spyware or malicious files (that we are aware of at least!)