Horrible, insidious, heinous spyware must die. It’s as simple as that. We need to take the upper hand against the evil spyware developers. No sooner did my article on spyware run in Lockergnome today than my computer became infested with the nasty stuff.

Life imitates art that imitates life. Or something like that.

After returning from soccer practice this evening, I noticed that my computer was running rather slowly. Well, more than rather slowly … make that real slowly. Microsoft Internet Explorer was barfing pop up windows like mad–even with the Google Toolbar’s popup blocker turned on. Time to switch to a trusty old copy of Mozilla and smoke out the spyware.

Since it had been a couple of weeks since the last time I did any extermination, I decided to run Spybot Search & Destroy.

After running Spybot Search & Destroy, I discover that my computer has become infested with eXactSearchbar, eZula HotText, and KeenValue. I got most of the way through the spyware removal process when the program informed me that my computer would need to be rebooted to delete the remainder of the spyware. No sooner did I exit the program than Norton Anti-Virus popped up to let me know that my computer had become infected with the VBS.Redlof.A virus.

A coincidence? I think not.

After I rebooted my computer, Spybot finished up its spyware removal routine and I opted to immunize. Then I updated my copy of Norton AntiVirus and ran a virus scan. It’s still running as I write. I can only hope that my computer will be happy and healthy before I run out of caffeine this evening.

I’m not sure which one of my kids I can blame for getting my PC infected with spyware today. But I have a pretty good hunch it was my darling daughter. Gotta love that kid … she gives me plenty to write about, whether it’s a $150 cell phone bill for her incessant instant messaging or this latest infestation. Then again, it may have been the boy’s doing …

I don’t have to write this stuff. I only need to write it down.