Is spyware really such a problem?

A few hours ago I checked out my teenage sister's computer. She has it for about six months and when she got it I spend some time to protect it against all the crap on the internet.

I installed a free antivirus solution and also the free Zonealarm firewall. Then I also installed some anti-spyware programs like Spybot S&D, Microsoft Anti-spyware and Lavasoft Ad-aware. I used Spybot's advanced features and Spywareblaster to prevent spyware and advised her to update these programs frequently.

Windows XP also gets patched automatically so that also boosts her security. Until now she hasn't been infected with spyware yet. So this should be a splendid example that when taking the right precautions it is hard to get hit with spyware.

If you take the kind of precautions like I described, don't visit strange places on the web (or stop visiting them) and don't click YES on every popup then you should be quite safe on the web. Another tip; if you want to download a new free program but you aren't sure if it contains spyware you might want to do a search on Google (or any other search engine). If you see many people have problems with it you may be better of by installing an alternative.

But what does amazed me is that she uses three (yes three!) search toolbars in Internet Explorer. I don't see the point of running the Google, Yahoo and MSN toolbar all together but she doesn't seem to know how to disable them.

I guess there may me many other people who don't know how to disable toolbars in Internet Explorer so here's a short simple guide. It's really simple:

First you startup Internet Explorer
Right click in the toolbar section and you'll get a small menu which lists all toolbars.
Just click on the ones you want to disable.

That's it.