Rentright Policy
Rentright has a strict policy that we do not have or provide any form of Spyware, Adware or external pop ups from the site. Rentright is an external advertising and banner free site and will not use any data or information in a malicious act on or against the registered or non registered users of the site.
What are Spyware, Adware and Pop-ups?
Spyware in a nutshell is malicious software which is designed to take control or partial control of your computers operation without you being aware of it. Spyware is different to other forms of attack such as viruses where it does not replicate itself onto other machines, usually spyware will be planted on your machine for commercial gains of others, such as Pop Up Advertisements, theft of personal information such as credit card numbers, password details or to monitor your web browsing activity for marketing purposes or to hijack your browser and divert http requests to advertisements.
Adware usually can be found to refer to any software which displays advertisements without your consent on your pc. Some software that you may have downloaded will instead of charging a fee display advertisements on your machine, these are also classed as adware.
Pop-ups are usually as a result of one or both of the above being installed on your machine. They come in the form of banners or windows when you are surfing the internet. Popups also are found on websites, often you may visit a website and an advert will appear across your web browser, these are known as site pop ups.
How do you become infected?
The usual method of getting spyware onto your machine is by deception of the user through software vulnerability. The most direct form of this happening is by the user installing the software, however if you knew that the software was going to be gathering information from you it would be highly unlikely that you would be interested in installing it. So this is where piggybacking comes in, have you ever looked for some software and started to install it and it has free offers for other software that it will install at the same time, chances are good this is spyware. This is most common in shareware software applications, often the author has of the software has been paid to bundle the software with the spyware application.
How do you know if you are affected?
The most common complaint from this is that the machine you are working on will become increasingly slow and you will notice that the system performance degrades quiet markedly. Often you will see that the CPU usage is high and the hard disk is whirring and network traffic is increased. Your machine can become increasingly unstable and may crash at intervals.
How do I stop this happening or cure the problem?
The more common the threat has become then the remedies have there are available. There are programs which are designed to remove or block the spyware, as well as other practices that reduce the chance of getting spyware on the machine.
Anti Spyware Applications.
There are now many anti spyware programs on the market which have been released to block or remove the applications. Programs that can be found include Ad-Aware or Spybot which are reported to be effective in the removal and prevention. Other well known tools include Webroot, Spy Sweeper and Counterspy.
Also a number of the leading antivirus companies have also included now within their software the anti spyware features, these include Symantec, McAfee and Sophos. The Anti spyware programs work in two ways.
(1) Protect your machine from software being installed whilst you are online
(2) Clean your machine if you are infected
Always use one of the recommended anti-spyware packages as the common day trend now is for spyware programmers to make their own anti-spyware software that actually install the spyware on your machines.
Some of these to watch out for may include SpyAxe, SpywareStrike, WinFixer, SpyBan amongst many others.
Tips for Avoiding Spyware
Be careful on what you download from the internet; remember shareware applications can often carry vulnerabilities in them. Only download from sites that have applications that have passed the spyware and Ad-Aware testing.
Make sure that your machine has antivirus and antispyware software applications running. Make sure that these applications are recommended applications and provide the security.
Download a pop up blocker. A good one is on the google toolbar. This will stop any unwanted pop ups from websites that you may visit. These can be tailored to allow popups to appear from sites that you specify if there are applications that use a pop up window.
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