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PARASITES ADVICE Virus Advice Home

I occasionally get queries about related issues such as parasites and computer security. I am not going to provide much advice other than the very basics about these matters because I have little experience of these problems and it is an incrediably huge subject. I will however mention useful resources that I have come across.

What is a Parasite:

A parasite is a piece of software that may get installed on users' computers without their knowledge or consent. Many applications described as "freeware" come infested with parasitic software that latches onto the web browser and can result in such things as unwanted advertising, the user being spied on and that information being sent back to those that created the parasite, and can result in security holes which hackers could make use of.

File sharing services such as Kazaa and Morpheus, and download accelerators such as GoZilla and GetRight are a frequent source of parasites.

For a more info on parasites go to http://and.doxdesk.com/parasite/ . This is a site is run by a well respected developer. When you visit this page it will automatically conduct parasite detection for those with Internet Explorer users who have their browser appropriately configurated (which most people by default will have). If your configuration is wrong it will advise you.