I read an interesting article just now over at LinuxWorld.com. It’s late, so I won’t comment on it much, but it addressed a lot of current issues in the Open Source universe. These are issues that I’m somewhat concerned with now that I regularly use Mozilla Firebird and OpenOffice.org.

Here’s the article: “Open Source ‘State of the Union’“

I don’t know if you are like me, but I am almost constantly fighting popup ads. What you may or may not know is that most of these popup ads are generated by components installed on your computer called “spyware”.

I deal with spyware a lot with customers at work. We have a product that is supposed to block popups. It does a pretty good job with JavaScript popups, but it can’t usually block spyware. We usually recommend the following sites/downloads to customers with spyware.

and.doxdesk.com: parasite — Doxdesk has some great information about known spyware parasites: what they do, where they come from, and how to remove them. It even has a quick and dirty JavaScript that will attempt to detect spyware on your computer. I’m looking at the site right now and it says I have something called “IPInsight” installed. It also gives you a direct link to information about removing whatever you may be infected with.

Lavasoft Ad-Aware — The free version of this software will scan for and help you remove spyware components from your computer. They also have a Professional version (for a cost) that stays on all the time and detects as spyware viruses are installed on your computer. I run the free version (never felt like buying it, but it would be nice) program about once a month—whenever I notice stray popups—and I usually find 20 or 30 new components each time I run it.

If any of you have never used either of these resources, I encourage you to do so. Let me know what you find.