As spyware frustrates, technology companies feel heat

SEATTLE (AP) — The people who call Dell Inc.'s customer service line often have no idea why their computers are running so slow. The ones who call America Online Inc. can't necessarily explain why Internet connections keep dropping. And those who file error reports with Microsoft Corp. don't always know why their computers inexplicably crash. 

Sometimes, the company that gets the complaint is rightly to blame. But with alarming frequency, officials at these and other technology companies say they are tracing customer problems back to one culprit: spyware. In the past year, spyware problems have become especially pernicious, leaving companies scrambling to respond to customers who don't necessarily realize they have spyware.

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