My friend Lauren is twelve, and has her own laptop which she uses for school work.
She’s a careful internet user, and has virus protection, a firewall and even a filter so that she doesn’t accidentally come across unsuitable websites.
But recently her computer started behaving strangely.
Every time she started her web browser lots of different windows would open on her screen.
Each of these ‘pop-ups’ featured a different website, ones she had never seen before.
And whenever she typed the wrong address into her browser she got taken to a strange search page that had lots of links to commercial websites instead of the page she wanted.
Her computer was running a program called ‘lop’, which sets your web homepage and search options to make sure that you visit their own site, called the ‘Live Online Portal’.
Lop is often called ‘adware’ and is there to put as many paid-for adverts on your computer screen as possible.
Parasite programs
It is only one of a vast number of parasite programs, including Gator, Bargain Buddy and SaveNow.
These programs sit on your computer doing something you don’t want, usually as a way to make money for someone else.
Adware is irritating and can be confusing, because it’s not at all obvious what is going on with your computer.
They are very different from viruses or worms or the other bad programs we hear a lot about.
They generally don’t do any real damage to your computer, like deleting files or damaging information, although they often create security problems that others could take advantage of.
The people who write them make them as hard to remove them as possible. Even if they have an ‘uninstall’ button it generally doesn’t work properly.
It took me over an hour to get rid of lop from Lauren’s PC, and I know what I’m doing.
I had to search the internet, find lots of separate files with deliberately obscure names, and even change the Windows settings by hand. I doubt that any new net user would have managed it.
Perhaps the worst thing is that Lauren installed lop herself.
She recently found a cool program called Messenger Plus!, from a company called Patchou, that adds extra features to MSN Messenger.
Unfortunately when you install it you also get a copy of lop, presumably because the people making Messenger Plus! get paid to do this.
You can decide not to install lop, but you have to know what you’re doing and click ‘No’ at the right time.
Very few kids, and not many new net users, will realise what’s going on, and as a result they will get this nasty little program on their computer.
And unless they’ve got a techie friend, they may well be stuck with it.
It all goes to show that you have to be very careful what you download from the web, or you could get a lot more than you bargained for. Lauren certainly did.
Have you unwittingly installed adware?
Click here to have your say!
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