By Doug Mullis, Secretary, Tampa PC Users Group
dmullis@tampabay.rr.com

Vice President John Witmer started our meeting at about 6:55 pm. We did not have the usual SIG portion of our meeting as we were setting up our new location, including a wireless closed circuit monitor at the front door.

John described the Pepin layout and where the restrooms and break room are. We plan a tour at our next meeting as construction is still in progress. We expressed our appreciation to Pepin for the fine facilities with a heartfelt round of applause.

John Witmer introduced our presenters for the evening, Phil Owens and Dave Bove of Sunbelt Software with US offices in Clearwater, Florida. Their parent company is France-based Sunbelt International Group, a leading provider of enterprise system infrastructure software, including anti-spyware, security, anti-spam and systems management tools.

Phil started with, “Tonight we are going to talk about spyware” and then asked ,“Is your computer spying on you?” If your computer is slowing down, crashes frequently, you’re getting more popups when you go from site to site and you suddenly have a new browser home page, then you’re probably suffering from spyware. Spyware is installed for commercial gain and to learn your interests.

To protect yourself, you first need a good firewall. Zone Alarm and Microsoft SP 2 were recommended. Next you need to install reputable anti-spyware. Sunbelt offers Counter Spy for detecting and eliminating spyware at a modest price of $19.95 for the first year and then for $9.00 a year you can keep it current. You can install multiple anti-spyware programs if you wish in the hope that what one misses, another will detect.

Phil and Dave told of their many successes in dealing with spyware installers and answered many questions on how they develop and keep their anti-spyware effective. They suggest you read EULA’s closely when you install any “free” software. We were also invited to visit

http://www.sunbeltblog.com for some interesting reading.

Sunbelt Software donated three copies of Counter Spy as door prizes. After a short break, numbers were drawn for the prizes. The lucky winners were Linda Neal, Kevan Sheridan and Bruce Register.

The meeting concluded about 8:45pm. u