What is teh difference between a virus and spyware?

[admylin]

Help! I've been trying to run a scan to find any virus or infections on my computer. I know I have 2 Trojan things which my programme can not remove. Now it says I've got loads of Spyware. What are they?
What would be the best protection I could get? Going to have to buy some sort of software because we do our banking on the computer and now I'm worried.

You need Norton antivirus and Outpost Firewall if you have broadband (well those are examples of good packages which do the job if properly installed and maintained, there are others).
Spyware is there to collect keystrokes (it records what you type and potentially transmits this information to a computer elsewhere, for possibly criminal use such as hacking into accounts )
Viruses inflict other types of damage, usually corrupting files and hijacking your address book to send themselves to everyone you know.

Thanks, will go and see what is on offer in the shop as we are in Germany but they should be international. I've heard of Norton and Macafee, are they the 2 major ones? I've deleted Explorer as that was where alot of our computer problems seemed to come from. It had a life of it's own!
The scan I'm running says I've got over 100 Spywares detected. Is that normal do you think? Are some harmless or will I need to delete all?

it's easier (and free) to download spybot and adaware they'll clean your pc.

Will give anything a go, will google spywbot and adaware.

spybot

AdAwareSE

hth!

Tbh I think a lot of them are harmless but if the harmless ones are there then the potential is for harmful ones to be too.
Good luck, the free software sea has linked to is very effective

Thanks, am running spybot now. Hope it can do more than the Bitdefender anti virus I was using (also downloaded) but I think in the long run will have to buy software or would just the freeware stuff do the job?

i also have AVG 7.5 (free edition) and cookie cleaner, they are all free downloads and seem to be doing the trick!

about 6 months ago we had a really bad trojan and had to get an expert in, who installed all of them (he was appalled by our lack of defences!)

Must admit, we've neglected our computer defences since we moved to Berlin. Used to have loads of thing sinstalled from dh's work because he took the laptop to university office so he had to install them!
Spybot has just completed search and found nearly 200 spyware thingys. Beter go and try to get rid of them!

Well, thanks for all the tips ladies! Spybot seems to have cleared up all the nasty things from our computer so I can reccomend it if any of you think you might have a virus! Thanks again.