I’ve just spent two days cleaning up Pia’s computer from all the spyware and viruses she collected. It was quite a job. My slightly dated version of Ad-Aware found over 600 dialers, spyware toolbars and other malware. Spybot S&D found another 500 after I updated it to the current definitions file. Then I installed Kaspersky Antivirus, which took out 36 viruses. I usually don’t like Kaspersky, but it did a good job here.

All this happened to her PC while Norton Antivirus was running. I know an antivirus software that I will never recommend again. Instead, I recommend installing Spybot S&D on all new computers, and making sure it gets run frequently. I’m not sure it’s possible to educate some people. The average internet user doesn’t have what I would consider the minimum requirements to be on the net, but it seems there’s no way to stop them, either.