Lions and Tigers and Bears...Oh My!

MaaMaw,
Let me try to clarify your questions to the best of my ability.

You wrote "Am I missing something?? DO I need SpySweeper too? IS AdAware dangerous?"

Adware can take the form of BHO's (Browser Hijacker Objects) which can install themselves on your computer simply by visiting a questionable website.

I know what you're thinking, and it's not porn sites. It's the "Free" sites.
"Free" coupons, games, sweepstakes, ect.

These BHO's serve you with selected ads (they take the place of the genuine ads that a website owner might have placed) by overwriting the original ad's content, and replacing that with one that has their afffiliate commission links embedded.

Some can even install keystroke loggers, to get your passwords and bank account information.

The website owner has no clue that their ads or content is being "hijacked," due to the process happening on the local machine. (Yours.)

To answer your question, I don't think you need SpySweeper. Each anti-spyware program removes certain things, and cannot catch them all. Free ones work just as well.

One big problem is that some spyware apps, to make themselves look better, count Cookies as being bad, when they're not. Every time you visit a site on the Internet, you'll usually get a "cookie" which can help identify you at a later date, remember your settings, and help your browsing experience in a lot of ways.

These spyware apps may find one or two questionable programs or adware, but it doesn't look that good when you pay $29.95 for a program that only returns one or two results...so they add in cookies. Now your scan result looks much better, they identified 30 or 40 different areas by including cookies.

Follow me?

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You also asked, "The shop that worked on my computers last time told me I could take my firewall off because I had all the computers on a router -- he said the router does the job of a firewall. "

Think about something for a minute. A Router simply delivers packets of information, "routes" your request to you by the simplest path.

Every time you request information (click on a link) your request goes through a router. So, if a router of and by itself did the job of a firewall, then all of us would be protected from adware and such simply by surfing the net, our requests passing through different routers. And that doesn't happen.

A Router, in order to protect you, must be set up and administered. There are (if I remember right) 65,586 different ports on your computer that a hijacker can get in. A System Administrator can configure a router to protect their company's data infrastructure by limiting access. Has your router been configured?

Me thinks that your computer shop guy is either an idiot, or he knows that if you surf without a firewall, soon you'll have so much uninvited crap on your machine that..Guess what? You'll have to bring it to him again and again to get "fixed". I think the guys setting you up.

By all means, GET AND USE A FIREWALL (shouting's over) to protect yourself. ZoneAlarm is probably the best free one out there, better than most paid ones.

If you connect to the 'net anywhere, you'll be protected.

Also, use Microsoft's free antispyware. To be doubly sure, use ad-aware or any other free ones. What one doesn't catch, the others will.

I read somewhere that it takes a Hacker 4 minutes to hack into an unprotected computer. Use a firewall. Run spyware-catching software. Disable active-X controls.