Beware of Spyware Recording Your Personal Information

Inside a Cherry Hill coffeehouse, customers can get a mocha and their email. But this computer has something hidden in its hard drive, spyware. Spyware programs sit in the background of a computer and can record passwords and other information you don't want strangers to know.

Tech expert Dr. Ken Hartman scanned the hard drive with software called 'Pest Patrol'.  "Within a matter of seconds we have over 75 individual files, programs that are monitoring the activity on this computer."

45 minutes later the grand total was "2340".

The coffeshop owner had no idea what was on her computer. "Surprised at how much information is out there that people are collecting on other people unbeknownst to the user."

It's not just cafes, computers in public libraries can also harbor spyware.

"Nearly 300 spyware files were found in this computer"

The Chester County Library scans its drives frequently to check for viruses and spyware.  "Unfortunately in practice even when those settings are set some programs will override them and things will accumulate so we do use a few spyware detection programs periodically to find and remove things but they do build up pretty quickly."

So how can you protect yourself when you sit down at a public computer?  "Download a program for free to do a test to see whether or not there is any spyware on the computer. Make sure your erase your tracks which means any sites, any places you've been to: Tools, Internet options and you can delete any temporary files by simply hitting delete files and clearing your history."

The bottom line: if you don't want your information out there, use common sense. Don't supply private or financial information because you never know who's logging on after you.