Effects and Behaviors
A spyware program is rarely alone on a computer: an affected machine usually has multiple infections. Users frequently notice unwanted behavior and degradation of system performance. A spyware infestation can create significant unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic. Stability issues, such as applications freezing, failure to boot, and system-wide crashes are also common. Spyware, which interferes with networking software, commonly causes difficulty connecting to the Internet.
In some infections, the spyware is not even evident. Users assume in those situations that the performance issues relate to faulty hardware, Windows installation problems, or another infection. Some owners of badly infected systems resort to contacting technical support experts, or even buying a new computer because the existing system "has become too slow". Badly infected systems may require a clean reinstallation of all their software in order to return to full functionality.
Moreover, some types of spyware disable software firewalls and anti-virus software, and/or reduce browser security settings, which further open the system to further opportunistic infections. Some spyware disables or even removes competing spyware programs, on the grounds that more spyware-related annoyances make it even more likely that users will take action to remove the programs.
A typical Windows user has administrative privileges, mostly for convenience. Because of this, any program the user runs has unrestricted access to the system. As with other operating systems, Windows users are able to follow the principle of least privilege and use non-administrator accounts. Alternatively, they can also reduce the privileges of specific vulnerable Internet-facing processes such as Internet Explorer.
In Windows Vista, by default, a computer administrator runs everything under limited user privileges. When a program requires administrative privileges, Vista will prompt the user with an allow/deny pop-up (see User Account Control). This improves on the design used by previous versions of Windows.
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