Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation which, among other things, allowed for stiffer penalties for software manufacturers and others who use spyware fraudulently. It is great that the Congress has decided to take up this issue for us, but I imagine it'll be about as effective as past measures to legislate the Internet (sound required).
My advice to you, no matter what Congress does to make the Internet safer, take some steps of your own...
1. Nothing good is free - this is especially true on the Internet. If it's free, it's too good to be true. Spyware and virus authors use the fact that you're too cheap to pay for anything as a tool to sneak onto your computer.
2. Anti-virus and anti-spyware tools can only protect you as long as you don't bypass or disable them - If you go ahead and tell the computer to do something unsafe, it assumes you know what you're doing. Believe me, you don't. Also, you don't want to disable these tools because if you do they won't get their new updates. If they don't have new updates, they don't know what Timmy the 14-year-old virus writer has produced this week, and they can't protect you from it.
3. Weekly scans - I can't stress this enough: run a manual anti-virus and anti-spyware scan weekly.
4. Stop looking at porn! The majority of spyware infections I see are caused by the user downloading a codec to translate and view a pornographic video. When you install the codec, you also install the spyware.
5. Don't let your children use your computer without supervision. This includes your teenagers. Teenagers have grown up with computers and they think they know what they're doing. They don't. Teens assume they always know what's best, and not just with authority figures; they really don't know what's best for your computer, either.
Happy computing!
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