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According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Study, 68% of home Internet users (93 million US adults) probably have Spyware or Adware on their home computers. Spyware is usually defined as a computer program that gathers information (without a person's knowledge) about a PC user's habits, and then sends that information back to another entity. Spyware will also often assert (in some way or another) control over a computer without the owners knowledge.

With the news of the Spyblock Bill being brought to the full Senate for consideration, I thought it might be helpful to mention a couple of the free anti-spyware/adware utilities that are available:

1. Spybot Search and Destroy - This is one of the stalwarts of the anti-spyware developer community. Although you can always donate to the author, it remains a free and relatively robust anti-spyware program. It's continually updated (the last update was 11/18/05) and possesses fast scanning and removal of threats.

2. Ad-Aware SE Personal - While Ad-Aware now has a pay version, their free version is certainly worth trying out. One thing that differentiates this from some other products, is its use of a Code Sequence Identification feature. This allows Ad-Aware to stop Spyware variants even before full definitions are available. 

3. Microsoft Antispyware - This free anti-spyware offering is in beta, so you should keep that in mind before you try it out. That being said, it's pretty effective at blocking spyware, and it really does offer detailed information about what spyware has been found and is being blocked.