Google Toolbar - http://toolbar.google.com/

Adaware - http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=506

Spybot v1.2 - http://kujoe.com/spybotsd12.exe

AVG Anti-Virus - http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

P.S. - I added Spybot to the list since it finds some adware/spyware that Adaware doesn't.

Hope this helps,
Ken

monitors what you're doing with your computer. Most often it is watching your web browser and keeping track of where you're visiting. However, it could also be monitoring which programs you run and other such stuff. Most often, it is installed along with another web-enabled program.

Let's say for instance, that you downloaded a web-radio client and the installer for that client added spyware to your machine too. The spyware program might keep track of which online radio stations you listened to, how long you listened, how often you switched stations, etc. The spyware program collects all of this info and sends it back to some third party who is interested in knowing that stuff. Perhaps it's for marketing specific products to you.

The biggest beef people have with spyware is that they don't know it has been installed. An analogy would be: I come to your house and install cable, but I also bug your phone while I'm there. The difference is that it's easy to remove the phone bug. Some programs refuse to work correctly if you remove the spyware because it kills the company's revenue stream.

Spyware is most often installed with "free" software you get off of the Net. The reason the program is free for you is because the company that wrote it is getting paid by the spyware company. The spyware company takes all that info from all of those users and does stuff like developing marketing strategies.

Cookies are a bit different. Cookies are passive. They are set by a website and read by that website when you make subsequent visits. Amazon is a good example. Cookies on Amazon allow you to add stuff to your shopping cart and then leave the Amazon site entirely to visit TER and lord knows what else. When you come back to the Amazon site, the shopping cart still has the items that you placed in it. The reason this works is because a cookie was set in your browser that encoded the contents of your Amazon shopping cart.

TER works the same way. If, when you logged in, you checked the little box that says "Remember Password", then TER sets a cookie with your username and password (encoded, most likely) in it. When you come back to TER, TER reads the contents of the cookie and logs you in automatically.

Also, there are different types of cookies. There are cookies that are set by the site you visit, and cookies that are set on behalf of another site or company. The second variety is known as a third-party cookie. Doubleclick is the one that comes instantly to mind. If a site sets third party cookies, it is probably sharing information with that third party. So, though you never visit Doubleclick's website, they still know far more about you than you want them to. They then do what the spyware companies do, sell your information to others.

If you turn off cookies or refuse to allow them to be set, you sometimes lose some of the features that websites have to offer. However, depending on your browser and browser version, you can disable the setting of third-party cookies without causing any problems with the primary site.

Hope this helped.

Spyware is a special kind of cookie. It is used by data tracking companies. The cookie goes on when you go to a site and then each time you go to another site montiored by them they can tell all of their monitored sites you have been to. They sell the information. Spyware removers go throuogh your cookie lists and  remove cookies by these companies.