I have a little confusion over this Spyware thing. Without putting my guesses and theories forward, let me ask, what is a spyware? Is it the extra toolbar added to my screen which says that it blocks pop-ups?

I've been seeing many ads which want us to remove this spyware with their help. Is it true that spyware causes the system to run slower? I think I need a li'l help there.

It depends what the toolbar is. Did you put it there on purpose? There are programs you can download that will remove spyware, but you need to make sure it is a trusted program, because some spyware removers actually put spyware on your computer. Two popular anti-spyware programs are spybot search and destroy and adaware SE. Both can be found at download.com. I would also recommend using the firefox browser because it prevents spyware. It can be downloaded from getfirefox.com.

This page here gives you all the information you'll ever need about spyware

Spyware might be a toolbar suddenly appearing in IE. If you had yourself installed the toolbar, then technically, it's not spyware because you yourself have agreed to its terms and conditions. But, if it appears suddenly and you get pop-ups, browser hijacking, browser getting stuck, then it's spyware.

Hope I helped.
Angi

I've got a problem which I don't think is spyware. : Why does my homepage get selected as some unwanted site, even though I've set it as about:blank? Is it virus, and is it curable?

That helped, Angi I was able to remove a toolbar with the ext. links provided on that site.