Spyware: Nuisance or Serious Problem

The articles on the health of the Internet made me think of this.

So what does everyone think of spyware? It is an annoyance? A problem?
What steps, if any, do you take to protect your PC from spyware? How do you think spyware affects businesses? Do you think an anti-spyware bill will ever pass, and if so, will it be enforceable?

I have a couple of spyware checkers, SpyBot and AdAware. I have 2, because sometimes one will miss something that the other will catch. AdAware runs a pretty fast smart scan, so I run that every few days. I also block sites in my browser. My Norton Antivirus 2007 also scans for spyware, but it takes SO long to run a full scan, that I do not do this often.

I have not run any benchmarks, but it seems like spyware definitely slows down PCs. We had one PC at work that, according to AdAware, had over 1600 instances of spyware. The user was complaining about PC problems, and the PC certainly appeared faster after these were removed.

Here is an article on C-Net about spyware bills:
http://news.com.com/Spyware%2C+data+privacy+bills+reappear+in+House/2100-1028_3-6157826.html?tag=news.1

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