Anyone know some info about spyware?

I watched a documentary on the History Channel the other day that gave an alarming statistic: they say that 9 out of 10 computers on the 'net are infected with spyware. It pisses me of to no end how corporations can gather more and more information about us!! If there is anything that will lead us quickly into corporate-statehood, it is allowing companies to know everything about us in the same way a government would, including where we shop, live, what we buy and what we write or read on the internet.

Anyone know an easy way of checking my computer for spyware? I mean the kind that allows someone to follow my keystrokes, etc. Any suggestions would be cool... also, does the fact that I use dialup make me any less vulnerable?

Thanks, B-rad

Ad-Aware:

http://www.lavasoft.de /

Spybot - Search and Destroy:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Hijack This:

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Use the programs offered by these sites to get a handle on strange behavior. Some also check for registry inconsistencies. These are considered the best of spyware removal by many experts.

(in addition to Ad Aware)

I suggest you dump it quickly. Apart from being bloated and bug-ridden it seems to let in loads of spy programs. Change to Mozilla Firefox and you won't get any spyware, and you'll also get pop-ups and ads blocked as a matter of course.

Run AdAware and Spybot after you've run IE and then after you've run Firefox and you'll see the difference.