A lot of viruses are designed to slow down your Internet connection... don't know WHY that's all they do (as opposed to formatting your hard drive) if they got into your computer to begin with, but they do...
As for spyware, the way it works is it "piggybacks" onto your Internet connection to transmit data, so it would by definition slow it down.
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The Ed draws near! What dost thou deaux?
A lot of viruses are designed to slow down your Internet connection... don't know WHY that's all they do (as opposed to formatting your hard drive) if they got into your computer to begin with, but they do...
It's not so much them trying to slow down *your* internet connection as to perform a Denial of Service on someone else (ie Microsoft) which basically amounts to slowing down that company's connection by using yours and those of many other infected machines simultaneously to overload it.
I don't believe I have a virus or spyware. When I read a web page there's no traffic through my ADSL box. And there's no problem with speed either.
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'The surest sign that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.' Calvin and Hobbes
Are you tough enough to be the King of the Hill?