Backdoor Santa - The Horrific Saint Nick

A free article on Security

By: Isaiah Henry

Santa and Christmas are two words that you thin of in tandem. When you think of Santa, you think �ho ho ho!� Well, Backdoor Santa is a lot different and makes you say �oh no!� Now why would that be? How can cheery Santa make you so unhappy?

Why is it doing that? To be truthful, this is a different Santa indeed. Backdoor Santa is a silent invader of your internet browser, put there to spy on you. It is a spyware. You will not even know it is present on your computer.

So how did you get it in the first place? Remember that cool looking toolbar you downloaded to help you with your internet searches? It had such great features that you felt you absolutely must have to most pleasurable surfing experience? Well that is how you got this silent little spy on your computer. Toolbars like Alexa and Hotbar lead the pack when it comes to installing Backdoor Santas on your computer. And before you think it, you cannot uninstall them so easily.

Backdoor Santa will not give you any ads, or popups, nothing to indicate that it is on your computer. What then gives away its presence? Toolbars attached with your internet browser is where you should look for it. How your toolbars behave when you do internet searches or browsing is the key. Toolbars like Alexa and Hotbar are two examples of Backdoor Santa.

Backdoor Santa will collect information on which site you visited, which item you clicked, the keywords used by you, any shopping done by you. Do you really want your net activities to be scrutinized by anyone other than yourself? The result is that your search results get programmed to reflect your internet behavior.

Just when you thought that anti-virus software was all you need, mischievous programs such as the backdoor Santas call for actual specialized spyware software today to fight off their presence and potential threat.

Backdoor Santa can report about cookies stored in your computer. Cookies are small programs installed on your computer so that your regular internet activities do not take long. This should ideally be done only by your trusted sites like bank, email programs etc. Yet, every website you visit has the ability to store a cookie on your computer. You can stop this by barring storing of third party cookies.

There are a lot of people today who frequent the web and while people could care less, URL loggers are the other means of tracking the sites you visited online. Normally, they are stored in your temp folder and this includes even images of the sites, something like taking snapshots of them. This is perhaps because there may be times you would want to access the same site and to easily show them would be something better to do if the cookies and files are already on your workstation.

You may say that this cannot happen to you as you have antivirus programs installed. But antivirus programs work against viruses. Backdoor Santa is not a virus. Antivirus programs will neither detect nor remove Backdoor Santa from your computer.

Each activity you do with your computer is crucial. Just when you think that you are free from harm, spyware such as this backdoor Santas may indeed give you a surprise. Unfortunately this surprise is something you will not really be happy about.

Information about the Author:

Isaiah Henry is a spyware removal guru at RemoveSpywareandAdware.com, he enjoys providing useful information for users to their privacy online. You can visit us on spyware removal to gain insight.

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