The most popular antispyware software today is distributed by Lavasoft. Ad-Aware SE Personal, their free version that is available to home users, has been downloaded nearly one million times every week. What exactly is it that makes this program so popular with internet users today?

In our every changing electronic driven culture, maintaining privacy on the internet is on the top of most people’s minds. Ad-Aware SE Personal is a free program that is designed to detect and remove spyware that has been installed on your computer. Why is it so important to have spyware removed from your system?

Spyware is a program that runs in the background. Its only purpose is to perform operations that intrude on your privacy, such as recording the websites that you visit, or even worse, the buttons that you press on your keyboard and then send that information back to the developer of the spyware program. This means that certain spyware developers could potentially have a record of personal emails, information entered into web forms and passwords that you have typed! This is not good for obvious reasons.

Spyware is often found in free downloadable programs that users install on their systems. The only reason that these programs are offered for free in the first place is because spyware developers have paid them to insert their spyware into their software. What’s even worse, is that if you were to completely read the EULAs (End User License Agreement) that come with these programs, they will often tell you that these programs are included! So be sure you never select I Agree, without actually knowing what you are agreeing to.

So now that you have been careless and have spyware programs on your computer, what can you do? Well, go to the Lavasoft website and install a copy of their Ad-Aware SE Personal. Once this has been completed, you will want to run a complete system scan on your computer so that Ad-Aware has the chance to fully check your computer for spyware programs. Once the scan is complete, you will have the opportunity to decide what you would like to do with any spyware programs that Ad-Aware has found on your system. The most concerning of these is any spyware component that is found within your computer’s registry.

Sometimes a program will not work properly once you have used the Ad aware program to remove the spyware component of it, but in this situation you have to ask yourself, do you really want to use a program that requires spyware in order to work properly? Kazaa is an example of one of these programs, so if you must have Kazaa, do not run Ad aware.

If you are a commercial user, or need a more powerful version of Ad-Aware to meet your needs, Lavasoft offers several different versions of their antispyware application. For your convenience in selecting the correct one to suit your needs, Lavasoft has included a product comparison chart that can be found on their website.