OK, when it comes to tech, I'm still in grade school compared to a lot of you cats. Now I know what spam is, and I know about Trojan horses, but what is spyware? Is it like some little byte that managed to get past my firewall, attach itself to a part of my hard drive and is now doing subversive CIA/KGB related stuff on my computer? I have XP, and a Messenger Service window pops up several times a day informing me that I may have a spyware program on my computer and that I need to go to a certain website to buy a program to eliminate the problem. Should I spend the $30 or is this a sham?
Spyware is basically software that performs activities behind the user's back - installing itself onto your computer, gathering information on you and transmitting it across the Internet, downloading files or running programs on your computer, messing with your system settings, or trying to pass itself on to others. You can pick them up anywhere, but I think you tend to get quite a few at Warez sites. A lot of spyware can be picked up by doing a simple sweep regularly with a programme like AdAware or Spybot Search and Destroy. Both are free - I use them together and they kick all kinds of ass. Often spyware can be attached to Trojans etc which makes it difficult to get rid of. I recently had a problem with one that hijacked my homepage and installed a bunch of shortcuts in my Favourites folder every time I rebooted. I'll let someone with more technical knowhow talk about that sort of thing. But yeah, I'd recommend that you download one or both of those programmes and run them at least once a week.
I also use another product called "Spyware Blaster" (this screws up the actual data being sent back to whoever is watching) in conjunction with "Spybot Search & Destroy" (which scans for the spying programs themselves). Both are freeware programs & allow updates of spyware profiles regularly.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html They are as neccessary as anti-virus software these days. Even more so if you ever visit the seedier sides of the Internet Metropolis, e.g. the Reg Light District or the various music bazaars. I've seen older PC's brought absolutely to their knees because there are so many spyware apps launching at startup that the computer becomes completely unusable.
Thanks for the links. Downloaded spybot search and destroy and was disgusted by what it found on my hard drive. If I'm using it correctly I hope to avoid the need for re installing windows. AGAIN.
Yeah, you should be able to avoid that. A couple of pointers can help you avoid the problem alltogether. For example, I have AdAware but rarely scan. The first scan I did in six months -- after reading this thread -- only found two small registry entries, no executables and about 50 tracking cookies. They were all in my wife's profile. Why? No, she's not a porn queen (I wish!) or an Kazaaa user. She uses Internet Explorer. That's the first tip. Dump IE and use an alternative browser. Besides, once you've used Firefox, you'll wonder why you were settling for IE for all those years. Second, get a firewall setup on your home network. If you have a cable or DSL router it might have one built-in. Check your documentation. Always better to have the firewall closer to the edge of the network. Otherwise invest in either Norton Internet Security -- US$69 with Anti-virus bundled -- or the $39 version of Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm is made by Checkpoint, which on the industry side is the best software firewall available. ZA has a freeware version but $39 gets you the full version which also does pop-up blocking (handled by default in Firefox, btw) and some AV scanning. Those steps will keep the ad-ware and malware completely at bay as well as protecting you from attacks aimed at turning your PC into a Zombie which are often undetected by AV and malware software.
Technically, that message is spam. You need to turn off messenger service, as it can be exploited by all those nasty little programs, too. It's very easy. Go to Control Panel>Adminitrative Tools>Services> and find "messenger" Then right click and choose properties from the dropdown menu. Now change the startup type from Automatic to disabled.
How about this? PAL spyware remover It did a search on my "other" computer and found spyware in the Windows folder and in the Microsoft Works Suite folder. Legit?
BTW, thanks to everyone who responded to this thread. It is for reasons such as these that I enjoy being part of the BigSoccer community. I probably couldn't get answers like these anywhere else.
Yes! There are still a couple pages that don't quite work on it... mostly microsoft pages.... but I've switched to it completely. I switched from msie to opera and from opera to firefox. It's a great browser.
There are some nifty plugins available for FireFox. One I have installed is "Show this page in IE". It adds an option in the context menu to open the same page in Internet Explorer. Useful if a page you are viewing isn't working correctly - just right-click, choose the menu option, and up pops IE already loading the page! I rarely have to use it - mostly I use it to check pages I'm writing to see how they look in IE.
On Firefox: 95% of pages out there work equall well in Firefox and Internet explorer. Tabbed browsing and gestures are great. If you use Kazaa, or E-Mule, or EDonkey, or whatever. You WILL get spyware. Doesn't matter what kind of filter you use and how often you use it.
Perhaps I'm confusing what you're saying, but does firefox incorporate gestures like Opera has? Because that's pretty much the only reason I still use Opera 6.
I hope the person who invented spyware/adware burn in eternal hell. I really do. Everytime I close my explorer, I get a bunch of ads for 80inch plasma televisions and slows down my computer. Sometimes, even freezing it.
You can easily get a plug-in that supports them. Look under 'extensions'. It's called 'All In One Gestures'.
yeah, thanks. I looked into it yesterday and have it up and running. The hardest part was importing all my Opera bookmarks, but I found a program called Bookmark Bridge that converted them to HTML for me. So far my only complaint with foxfire is the apparent inablility to turn on image caching.
I have been lurking here and took the advice of you good folks to switch to Fireox. I must say it is growing on me. It is almost as good as the Clint Eastwood movie which goes by the same name. Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread!
OKay, I have a question. Everytime I start up my computer I get an "error" message saying "C:/WINDOWS/System32.bridge.dll cannot be found" or whatever. I did a search of it on the net and I found out it is spyware from Adware.WinFavorites but it never comes when I scan with Ad-aware. How the hell do I get rid of it??
The best way to eliminate spyware entirely is to dual boot your Windows with Linux (an easy thing to do these days), and do all of your browsing with Linux, and having a choice of browsers - Mozilla/Firefox, Opera, Epiphany, and Konqueror. After 3-1/2 years of using Linux, and browsing the web while booted into Linux, I have yet to get a single virus, spyware, adware, or system crash. In that same time span, in more limited use of Windows on the web, I've had several of these.