Spy? Where?

Two days ago, my computer became infected by the most virulent, obnoxious strain of spyware I have ever seen. I couldn't even think about loading Internet Explorer without being deluged by pop-up ads and redirected constantly to surprisingly inexpensive penis enlargement offers. And even if I was just typing something in Word or working in another program, there would be constant interruptions, problems, blue screens of death and other assorted headaches.

And no matter what I tried, it kept coming back. I've had my share of adware and malware problems on my computer previously. (Must be all that dwarf and amputee porn I'm always downloading). But usually, you run Spybot or some other program, you edit your Registry to remove whatever crap has been installed there, and you're good to go.

Not this time. I edited my Registry feverishly, I ran just about every adware program I could think of, and this thing kept coming back. Attempting to delete it only made it angry.

I think now I have finally dealt with the problem. I cleaned out my Registry one final time, ran a newly-updated version of Ad Aware and restarted again in Safe Mode just to be sure nothing had reappeared. So it seems I'll be alright.

This article was really helpful. If you ever have Spyware problems, I suggest reading it. The guy offers a bunch of sane advice on how to deal with the problem, and basically explains what can go wrong in plain English for non-1337 h4x0rs.

But then something occured to me. What would be the point of designing a spyware program that's this powerful? It was so comprehensive, I couldn't really even use my computer. But the whole point of these programs is to (1) advertise to me, (2) obtain my personal information or (3) use my computer to infect other computers. Right? Have I missed something?

So if the program's so overwhelming to my computer's operating system, it prevents me from doing anything. I can't read the advertisements, so the marketing itself is no good. I can't visit any websites and enter any information into them, so it can't obtain any of my perosnal data, and I can't e-mail anyone, so it can't send itself to other people.

And then I developed a theory. What if the companies that sell anti-spyware software are creating these bugs in the first place? You know, it's like Lenin said...you look at the people who will benefit...

Seriously, it's a brilliant scheme. You send out all of these bots and malware programs all over the Internet with the sole purpose of screwing up people's computers. Then, when they can't even use their system any more, they pay you money to uninstall all of this crap you've just placed there. And since your company designed the malware, you're the only ones that know the perfect way to get rid of it.

The only companies I'm not prepared to indict at this point are Ad Aware and SpyBot. They provide their software for free through the always-useful download.com. So they don't stand to make any money off of this problem. Oh, and whoever made the program CW Shredder. That things works great and is provided gratis.

Other companies, like SpyHunter, that offered to clean out my computer for the low low price of $29.99...you guys are my prime suspects.

So I did a little research, and it turns out, some spyware-elimination companies have already been investigated by the FTC. According to Digital Silence, the makers of the program Spyware Assassin made it appear to consumers that their hard drives were in worse shape than they really were in order to sell more units of their software.

But nothing on the Web really seemed to confirm or disconfirm my theory. So it will officially remain a theory. Dang.