Twice yesterday, once on my own computer and once on a friends machine, I saw an incideous bit of malware/spyware.  It was masquerading as a “windows system checker” and popped up a window on the computer.  The window itself looked just like like a regular window, but by click on the red x to exit the window, it began to install the software.  My various levels of spyware protection saved me, but Mike B. wasn’t so lucky.  We’ll find out this evening if Adaware can actually remove it.  I did have a look at the Add/Remove Software and the malware was listed, but it requested a password to enable removal – the gall of it!

A couple of points on spyware:

1. If the gray “run this program” window and you’re on a site you don’t know or don’t trust, don’t allow the software to run.  Hit the red X and get out of there. 
2. Be very careful to be sure you are on the site you think you are on.  In both cases above, the malware came from sites that were simple misspellings of popular websites – and you might not even notice you weren’t on the right site.
3. Run Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy – both freely available over the web.  Update them weekly and run them at least weekly.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone would advertise via Adware.  And malware should honestly be a criminal offense.