Earthlink: Your hard drive may be spying on you

Miami Herald ^ | 10/14/2003 | Peggy Rogers

[Normal4me]

Hehe...I have worked/repaired other peoples computers before. People who haven't cleared their history files EVER or emptied their Recycle bin. Credit card numbers in word documents, Password doc on the desktop, etc.

I am very conscious about the latest 'threats' and have this machine loaded with all kinds of defensive measures.

[xm177e2]

Is this reporter even going to bother asking another source besides Earthlink, or is she just going to feed their press release straight onto the newswire?

[in the Arena]

bttt

[Porterville]

You should reformat your hard drive often, to keep control of your system.

[Porterville]

google toolbar gets rid of all pop ups... all of them.

[Allan]

Bump

[ex-Texan]

I run my deframenter and scan disc twice a week. Reformatting is not possible beause it erase everything on my hard drive. ;-)

[GWB00]

I can't do Google searches anymore, I got a virus and can't seem to get rid of it.

[Porterville]

I would get a CD burner or a high capacity zip drive, organize my files and all my software in a cd folder (as you would a tool box) and at least, once a quarter, or every few months, reformat you cpu.... it only takes a few hours (with high bandwith) and it helps to keep everything moving quickly.... also, it opens up new ideas you might not have thought of..
trial versions..

[Porterville]

You could also just get Norton's Ghosting software, and it would be even faster.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

I downloaded and ran ad-aware. It found one suspicious component:

BrilliantDigital key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.b3d\

While the scan was running, it said it found:

1 registry key
1 component recognized
1 new component
28 running processes

Do you think the BrilliantDigital key is spyware, and should it be removed? Also, what are the running processes?

Thanks.

[Dialup Llama]

>I can't do Google searches anymore, I got a virus and can't seem to get rid of it.

You have spyware that rewrote your hosts file. Look atthe file HOSTS under your c:\WINDOWS directory and see if there are any entries that redirect the Google domain name to another server.

[Dialup Llama]

I also found an registry entry that was flagged. How can you tell what DLL, class or executable was installed in association with this registry entry?

[Petronski]

If I recall correctly, and I think I do, brilliantdigital IS spyware and can/should be pulled.

Second opinion, anyone?

[Calpernia]

See Steplock's post #5 for some excellent URLs.

Thank you Steplock.

[Starstruck]

Why are these not considered viruses. They arrest people who create viruses that are less intrusive than some of these spyware problems. If we can block telemarketers we should be able to block spyware or make them pay penalties.

[Calpernia]

Another good link to add to Steplock's post #5:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

Free online scan. Highly recommended for weekly check ups.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks. bttt ...

[EggsAckley]

Doug, I just bought the spyhunter program. It found and removed 128 "parasites".
Thanks! Now, off to Google to see if I still get those weird popups.

[MEG33]

Thanks!