A study by the National Cyber Security Alliance estimates that ninety percent of home computers are infected with some type of spyware. With spyware coming out of the woodwork, so has the slime that makes money from it. You can find more rogue or bogus anti-spyware applications these days than you can anti-spyware made by the good guys.

Falling victim to the rogue anti-spyware software is too easy with all the Internet ads, pop-ups and spam advertising it as the way to free you from the vermin that it perpetrates. This rogue software actually does more harm than good by opening the door for the bad guys. It fools you by supposedly finding spyware, not reporting itself, making you believe that it is doing you a service. Most of the rouge software only finds between 10 and 20 percent of the spyware. There is an ever-growing list of the bogus anti-spyware software and you can do some checking by going to Spyware Warrior.

One way of spotting rouge anti-spyware software is to pay attention when installing it. If it asks to install other software in order to run you should immediately become suspicious. The additional software is usually the culprit that reports to another server and/or opens ports to other malicious software. Another way to spot bogus anti-spyware is when it asks you to pay before it will delete the spyware that it finds. Most legitimate software will give you a free trial that will delete the spyware that it finds for a certain amount of time before you have to pay and there are several good programs that are free.

There are even fake review sites that give these bogus anti-spyware software favorable reviews, making it even harder to distinguish them from the good. Another way this bogus software hides the truth of its intentions is to spoof its name with names that that are similar with the real thing like Adaware Spy, Adaware Agent and so on.

With the introduction of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP you have some protection against spyware but I would still recommend a software application like Adaware, Spybot or even Pest Patrol. While Pest Patrol is not free, it does a thorough job and offers real time protection.

A lot of folks may want to try what they might think is the latest and greatest spyware killer but my advice is to be wary and keep your guard up. Do your research before relying on a product to protect your computer from malicious spyware.