Is it bringing up a yellow banner at the top of the webpage that says warning this site could be a scam?  Mine was doing that all the time earlier in the year, even when I brought up regular sites like the itchmo & itchmoforums pages.

No yellow banners. 

It was spyware according to spybot.

Thanks for that info on Defender Klondike!  I have a work-issued laptop that's supposed to have all the latest everything, but I never connect to the work network to get any upgrades, so it's probably all defunct by now.  Last time I ran the anti-virus program that is on here, there was spyware on here.  It think it's kind of hard not to run into it occasionally.

I read something in a computer magazine recently--I think it was saying to watch the upgrades you might be downloading.  Most of us just accept the message that says upgrades are available for your computer, do you want to download now.  But it sounded like this is sometimes a way to hack into your computer or load a virus.  Not too sure about this but maybe something to research.

I have Defender & AdAware plus my anti-virus software w/spyware detection.  I've had Defender for quite a while now & have never had any problems with it.  It runs in the background & that's it.

Petslave.....I have never heard that about upgrades.  I think anything is possible but that's a new one on me.  I try to keep up to date on these things because they are always trying to get one step ahead of the software trying to stop them.

I just recently added a firewall (part of my a-v) rather than use the Windows one & it wants to stop everything so I have to "train" it.  In order to keep your computer from these nasty things, you need a kazillion pieces of software & have to make sure they are all kept up to date.  It's a pain in the you-know-where.

A friend of mine got an email that he thought was from his hometown as he had been on their website to see the latest news.  The minute he clicked on it (not sure if he clicked on the email itself or an attachment.....it's usually in an attachment), he said all this stuff started going across his screen showing all the files that had a virus so he knew he clicked on something he shouldn't have.  This virus pretty much shut down his computer.  Cost him dearly to get it fixed. 

I was thinking about adding SpyBot to my arsenal but not if it slows down my computer.  I hope what I have now will do the trick.

That is why usually ignore all 'strange' mail. And if I do plan on just looking at, it is always done from the email site on my ISP so THEIR software can stop all nasty things.

That's why its good to have your own address in the address book so that if you get one from yourself, you'll know that something is wrong. It is good to have yahoo accounts that belong to you too, in the address book.

You probably don't need to worry about Spybot slowing your system.  I checked with my husband and they use the free version where he works, not the professional one like I thought.  (They run a tight ship.)  I'm sure now that my problem was with the ISP software, specifically an accelerator.  I'd feel safe installing Spybot and trying again.  It sounds like some people are running more than one program with no problems.  You can usually uninstall most programs easily.  Maybe Google 'uninstalling Spybot' first to see if there are any glitches getting rid of it.  I can't remember if the uninstall required any tinkering.

I do think you better be heed petslave's warning about downloading software upgrades through third party web sites.  I just got a Microsoft security warning on that when I went to a web site.  That is very rare for me to get those warnings.  I can't remember the last one.  If I upgrade, I use the vendor web site to do that.  You even have to be careful about that because there are rogue web sites that use a slightly modified version of the popular legitimate software names to trick you into downloading viruses or spyware.