How many of us are actually aware of the inner workings of our computer? While we may know how to carry out some rudimentary tasks and processes, these are fairly basic things to accomplish and which do not really get us any closer to appreciating the underlying concepts and issues that are involved with them.

Many of us are quite content with this state of affairs because it means that we do not need to unnecessarily concern ourselves as to the more technically demanding aspects of our computer. This is an extremely dangerous mentality to adopt because it means that we become complacent and overly confident about our computer security and hackers rely upon that crucial combination of both apathy and carelessness in order to more easily and effectively infiltrate our machines.

The dangers and risks posed by viruses and malware (the generic, catch all term used to cover all the various malicious software applications that exist on the internet) are very real and dangerous indeed. Without a shadow of doubt, one of the most dangerous of all of these applications is the key logger, which is a malicious program that embeds itself deep within the operating system making it almost impossible to detect.

The purpose of the keylogger is as simple as it is devastating, its sole premise is to record every single key stroke entered and pressed by the computer user and transcripts of the recorded keystrokes will then be submitted to a remote location for further use by the creator of the key logger application. This means that whenever the computer user accesses websites such as PayPal or other financial gateway sites, their password will be recorded, allowing for their details to be exploited and their money stolen.

If this was not scary enough, these malware applications are often combined with seemingly legitimate programs such as registry cleaner applications, and so the unsuspecting victim downloads the program in good faith and is presented with a fully working, totally functioning program that seems to do everything it is supposed to do. Unbeknown to them, there is an unwanted guest lurking in the very center of the program and a clever hacker will ensure that the editions made to the registry of the victim’s computer are done in such a way that they will not raise any suspicions.

Frankly put, it is the perfect form of camouflage: by pretending to fix the registry, malicious programs can then have a legitimate reason for accessing the registry. Furthermore, any editions that they do make will be unlikely to raise a red flag because after all, that is what a registry cleaner is supposed to do.

It is for this reason that the computer user must be extra vigilant whenever they download or seek to use a registry cleaner software package that they download from the internet, otherwise they may find that they really have strolled in the lion’s den, and managed to stick their head in its mouth…covered in barbecue sauce.

Make sure you protect yourself by only ever downloading a registry cleaner from a reputable source such as Microsoft. Be on the lookout for the url of the website, if it has https:// as opposed to http:// than you can breathe easy, as the website is a genuine site because it is relying on Secure Socket Layer technology.

Also make sure you check the security certificate for any registry cleaner software application you download, there are a number of official websites in which you can verify that the downloaded content is indeed correct, valid and authenticated.