Microsoft have published an interesting article to give a heads up on spyware. Simple it may be, but practical advice nonetheless.
Even experienced administrators need to beware – whilst researching some security issues this week, out of necessity I hit on some of the more unsavoury sites on the ‘net and before I knew it, my PC was infested with all sorts of pop-ups (and probably more).
If you do need to perform a quick clean up, I can fully recommend Spybot Search and Destroy and Lavasoft Ad-Aware.