For slightly less time than viruses and spyware have been infecting computers, virus scanners and spyware tools have been trying to protect computers. Many companies write many types of virus scanners and anti spyware tools but they are all the same in one way, they run on the operating system.

With Intel being the largest chip producer and now owning McAfee they will move the virus protection from software running on operating systems with gaping and constant security holes to the hardware level in the CPU. This makes sense because every instruction on a computer has to go through the CPU, why not put the security there. It will remain to be seen what kind of overhead this will put on the processor. Can you imagine a world where your relatives can buy a pc from Best Buy without Norton Anti-virus constantly popping up telling them they are not protected? This could be the start of that.

So this makes me wonder how is AMD going to counter? Write their own virus protection to put in the CPU or purchase a McAfee competitor? Heads up Symantec.

In the past most hackers were people who wrote viruses were most often looking for fame and notoriety.  Some of the most famous viruses of the past were I Love You, Code Red, Nimda, Melissa, and SQL Slammer.  These caused a tremendous amount of problems for people and companies.  Today, 70% of viruses also have spyware in them.  Most people writing spyware are under contract from some form of organized crime.  The way they make a profit is the spyware that is on your computer could likely be tracking your ids and passwords and sending them back to someone waiting to use them to access your accounts.  This leads to draining your accounts and identity theft.  Analysts have found that the people who used to write viruses have moved to writing spyware for profit.

Now that you know the motivation to write spyware you need to be sure you are protected.  Studies have shown that up to 90% of computers are infected by spyware.  No single spyware tool will find and remove all types of spyware, this is why you should install multiple types of spyware tools.  SpywareRemovalTools.com can direct you to multiple spyware tools.  A few of the best are SpyBot Search and Destroy, MalwareBytes, and Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware. After installing these spyware tools another step you can take to protect yourself is to not use Internet Explorer, instead try Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

Good luck and stay protected.