an important thing to remember is to stop surfing the internet with internet explorer....


how do these spyware programs get into my computer if i am not downloading and installing programs?

answer:
spyware is getting into your computer by exploits found in internet explorer. just visiting a website that has a bad advertisement from an ad company can trigger your computer to download and install spyware onto your computer with no user intervention. you will not know it has been installed.
( you will know cause your computer will be slower and crash all the time and websites fail to load... even windowsupdate can stop working leaving you vulnerable and consulting expensive computer shops to solve the problem.)

the current solution is not to use intetrnet explorer at all.....

use an alternative like firefox
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

more info about keeping internet explorer safe can be found here,
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...&sec=itfeature