YCS

The average computer user like you and me doesn’t know a lot about how the system works. And I don’t see why they should: as long as everything works and you can have your job done, you don’t need to know what happens inside the computer. It is just like a black box: we input what we need and we get what we want, without taking care or watching the whole process in-between the two steps. It’s like doing the laundry: you input dirty clothes and detergent, you push a few buttons and wait. At the end of the process, you get clean clothes. This is all you care about: the final cleanliness of your clothing, and nothing else. You don’t need to know chemistry, or to follow the transformations and interactions of dirt and detergent molecules in order to clean your laundry.

Why then would you be concerned of what a computer does in order to allow you write a letter?
This is why hunting for spyware can be a very difficult task, because it implies following instructions with as many as 10-15 steps. Each of these steps consists of installing something, or modifying files, or executing strange lines of code, so mistakes are very easy to make.

But you don’t need to panic, even if you don’t know anything about computers. Search the net for spyware removal solutions, indicating the name of the spyware program you’ve got infected with. Usually, those programs state their names and authors, so searching for solutions would be easy.

Print out the pages with the solutions you’ve found, and then follow them step by step, writing down at each step what you have done.

If you are lucky, you’ll manage to get rid of the nasty spyware by yourself. If not, the worst case scenario would be reinstalling all software in your computer, case in which, if you don’t know anything, you’d need a specialist to do it for you.