By definition, in order for spyware to work, it has to have access to an Internet connection in order to submit information to a master program. Of course, this information is undesirable, for obvious reasons.

While there are 1,001 different utilities which detect and remove these programs, one effective tool is the Windows Netstat utility. This video on PC Mech shows you how to use Netstat to detect any undesirable programs which your anti-spyware scanners may have missed. This is really worth checking out.

Note: Vista users will need to launch Netstat using administrator rights.