how does it work?

Hi xcaret98,

You didn't actually say which program you were asking about, but I'm guessing it is probably either SpywareBlaster or SpywareGuard, so here's a description of the two of them...

SpywareGuard is a resident scanner (similar in a way to how an anti-virus program works) which proactively scans files prior to them being executed; looking for spyware installation kits and such. It scans with both known signatures and some generic protection techniques to detect and prevent spyware installation. SG also includes capabilities to prevent browser hijacks and provides built-in download protection for Internet Explorer. Because of all of this, SpywareGuard does run in the background. In fact, there will be two processes related SG in your task manager.

SpywareBlaster is a preventative program. It sets flags in the registry to prevent the running of a specific list of bad spyware related ActiveX controls. This includes general spyware and malicious dialers. It also blocks a list of known spyware related cookies in IE6. SpywareBlaster should be run periodically, say once a week, to check for updates to its database. Other than that it doesn't need to be running to provide protection, so there are no processes run either at startup or in the background.

I hope this helps to explain how they work.