There's no knock on the door. No early phone call informing of a visit soon. Just walking into the house and finding a stranger already comfortable on the couch. He looks nice enough, sweet face and a warm personality that assures that he is just here to help. Even though, every now and then things seem to go missing around him. First it was small stuff. Television remote, maybe some socks Gone. Then one day the entire couch is missing, as is the kitchen sink. Which really isn't as bad as the fact that new stuff seems to be appearing. Hideous posters adorn the wall. Every time a corner is turned there is a new one hanging in awkward places. Every channel on the television seems to have turned into pornography. Oh and the television seems to be spawning more televisions. And on top of each screen is a garish poster.

The visitor's personality seems to have changed too. He seems to be channelling the spirit of a used-car salesman from hell. There seems to be little choice left. Hospitality be damned, it's time for him to move out. Except he won't leave. The lease to the house seems to have his name on it, and every time you force him out the door he seems able to lock you out as well. A regular David Copperfield this guy. That is, if the Vegas magician kept trying to sell you air-miles and had a penchant for teens and Thai lady-boys. Time to throw in the towel.

Shut the house down. Lock him inside and tear it down. Start new. New house, stronger dead-bolts. And a great big vicious guard dog. Except.....except one night you forget to lock a window and that is all he ever needed. Spyware is exactly like that. No virus has ever been so irritating. No worm can be this hate inspiring. Spyware seems to excel in its ability to drive you to such rage that putting a fist through the monitor and ripping the CPU apart with teeth seems like a logical choice. Browser windows pop-up. Software uninstalls itself. Little cutesy flash animations take over the screen and then refuse to leave. The hard drive suddenly becomes full of unreadable .exe files. It's the gift that keeps on giving: Most spyware is actually beneficial to its creator. Viruses at best just provide a sadistic thrill to their creator. Worms cannot turn a profit. Spyware on the other hand, is a result of marketing meetings and product testing. Teams of programmers coding after long coffee-fuelled nights trying to perfect it. The most notorious of them all, 180SEARCHASSISTANT is a cruel piece of software. Its presence starts innocuously enough. Open Internet Explorer to find a new search bar tagged on under the regular one. Not a problem. Seems nice enough. And then it goes berserk. Within days Norton Antivirus is screaming obscenities at the user. The browser window has decided no longer to be lonely and spawned a family of windows that is multiplying faster than South asians in a European country. Adware just throws its hands in the air and gives up. But how did it get there anyway? Was it bundled into one of the new James Blunt MP3s downloaded the night before or worse, is its source of origin one of the files hidden deep within the hard-disk. The place reserved only for downloaded video files that, if discovered, would identify you as a disturbing pervert. It doesn't matter. The unwanted guest has moved in and taken over the. rest of the computer like Israel invading Palestinian lands. Relentlessly. And to make it worse, spyware mocks the user. Ads pop up, offering to protect the computer from spyware. You can almost feel it grinning cruelly somewhere in the bowels of the hard disk. Efforts to remove it are fruitless. Anti spyware software takes a cursory glance at the computer and then rolls over and dies. Googling for help lead one to message forums where programmers are advising other programmers on how best to defeat it. Everything short of attacking the CPU with a blunt hammer is recommended. And in the end the computer is a wreck. Nothing works. But spyware is still there, grinning and chugging along with the efficiency of a Swiss watch. If, that is, Swiss watches gnawed the. hand off at the wrist. In the end, after hours of  battle, there is little else to do but carefully back-up all things important and precious and then format the entire hard disk. Then just for safe measure, format it again.

Or, throw the damned PC out the window and buy a Mac. That's one measure for which even the following metaphor sounds enticing: Move out of the house. Burn it to the ground. Buy an expensive but impenetrable condominium in a nice neighbourhood where everyone looks better and lives healthier. From time to time, in your sleep, see that same sneering face. Wake up, look around at the nice new house with kevlar windows and go back to sleep.

_{source Spider Mag.}