92million people have downloaded adware, and 41million people have downloaded spybot, and that's just from download.com! spyware/adware must be a common and flipping annoying problem - and the 92/41 million people who download these programs are the one's who know what to do with spyware / adware - think about the millions out there who don't know what to do - they end up with buggy crappy computers that have millions of pop-ups, search bars appearing in internet explorer, software being installed without their consent, and pcs that crash a lot. some of this spyware software will stop you from visiting ad-aware's website (www.lavasoft.de) and come up with an error page, and other's will change your google search results so you still can't find ad-aware's website and end up getting results that show you FAKE spyware removal software.

flipping (annoying) nightmare if you ask me! (even for me who knows what to do about it) For someone who doesn't know that they're doing it could be complete hell and could leave them with a completely innoperable computer - and this is just spyware/adware - this doesn't even touch on the hell that could be a spyware/adware infected pc that also has numerous nasty viruses / backdoor stuff (like email spam machine / hidden prawn sharing) unpatched windows vulnerabilities etc!

just goes to show how microsoft, even with windows XP sp1 weren't ready for the internet (it's only with windows xp sp2 that they have included built in firewall / virus protection). (remember they used to say windows 95 wasn't ready for the internet, or rather it wasn't till after windows 95 that they actually acknowleged that the 'internet' could be vaguely interesting)