MalwareThis document is intended for both the workplace and home user. This can be used for educational purposes to help users understand the dangers of downloading different malware and the causes it may have on their work or home computer. There are many different types of malware on the Internet today, and some are worse than others. Some can do very little damage to your computer, while others can shut you down and render your computer unusable. I'll talk about some of the different types of malware, what they do to your computer, and how they work. Next I will talk about how to counteract these problems and also what you can do to prevent these problems from happening again in the future. Finally I will talk about some personal experiences I have had and what I did to resolve the situation. This document will also cover a phone scam that is going around right now. There are several reasons why I deal with this phone scam. One, it's going around right now and the perpetrators are targeting the non-tech savvy and the elderly. The second reason to cover up this phone scam is to show what the perpetrators do if you don't pay the fee. The first one I'll talk about is spyware. Spyware is a program that is installed on a person's computer without their knowledge. What it does is collect information about the individual such as passwords, banking information, and keystrokes. There is another one called keylogger that also collects keystrokes. Normally a person gets spyware on their computer when they download a program from the Internet. Let's say you download AVG free antivirus when installing this program, which is free and is a great antivirus, it will ask you if you want to accept the terms and conditions and click Next. It will then go through a series of steps and during installation it will ask for a custom or basic installation. At this point at the bottom of the installation window you will see another checkbox selected. This box is from a third-party website and may be associated with a form of spyware.