Sick of Spam? Prepare for Adware

Wired News ^ | 5/7/2004 | Amit Asaravala

[justlurking]

The biggest threat to personal computing is neither spam nor viruses. Rather, it's the proliferation of a new category of deceptive software that takes over unwitting victims' computers for the purpose of gathering their personal information and bombarding them with unwanted advertising.

Dubbed spyware, adware, sneakware or malware -- depending on who you talk to -- these programs embed themselves deep inside a computer's operating system and spawn windows full of advertising messages, preventing users from accessing any other application. Or, they hide in the background, secretly transmitting information about the user's Web-surfing habits to a server somewhere on the Internet. If the user tries to delete the programs, they act like a cancer and replicate themselves over and over.

The fast-growing phenomenon is already responsible for more than 12 percent of all technical support calls in Dell's consumer hardware division, the biggest category of complaints this year, company representatives said. And they are not alone -- Microsoft claims half of all computer crashes reported by its customers are caused by spyware and its equivalents. The support calls are costing the company "millions," said Jeffrey Friedberg, Microsoft's director of Windows privacy.

[justlurking]

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the article, but I wanted to highlight the paragraph in bold type.

[kevkrom]

Don't use Outlook or Outlook Express for email, and be very careful about approving any downloads over the web. Most malware comes from exploiting security holes in the mailer or as side-effects from website downloads.

[E Rocc]

Spybot and Ad-Aware do a good job of removing this crap. I was able to download a DivX player that was bundled with GAIN (aka Gator) and remove the feces right away with Spybot. The player worked just fine.

-Eric

[Crazieman]

I've used Netscape mail for 7 years now, never had an issue with those nasty little email bugs.

In the spyware department, I run Ad-Aware quite often, and each run nets about 60-80 cookies. Usually no programs. I never run anything I download unless its from Fileplanet or another highly reliable source.

[squirt]

I use Secretmaker, It's free and works great.

[4everontheRight]

There is no way in heck I would ever buy from a company that resorts to advertising this way!!!

[WKB]

ping

[I still care]

My computer was running so slowly I was prepared to nuke the whole thing - turned out my adaware wasn't updating properly. I had over 39 running processes that I removed when I realized what was going on - no wonder it was such a mess.

[Rebelbase]

I keep picking up a spyware called SahAgent that places itself in the registry.

I can't tell where its coming from but It shows up every couple of times I log onto the internet. Adaware cleans it off but I wonder if its being re-installed from a virus I might have caught.

I'll scan for virus tonight.

[Notforprophet]

Ad-Aware 6 available free for personal use at this link.

[sarasota]

I have been told that it's Internet Explorer that let's all this stuff in. Use something else.

[savedbygrace]

That's Shop At Home, and it's very messy. I found one app, Pest Patrol, that claims to completely get rid of it, but I haven't paid the $40 to buy it yet.

I recently paid the $30 for XoftSpy, but it doesn't really get rid of SAH, so I'm regretting that $30.

[js1138]

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Spyware Blaster blocks the stuff from running an prevents you from seeing the popup ads that lure you into installing spyware.

Essential if you have kids. Removes the temptation.

It's a lot easier to prevent this stuff than to remove it after it's installed. Sometimes you can't get to the internet after removing spyware.

[MizSterious]

I don't know if they still have it there or not, but Dell's official website used to tell customers NOT to put any anti-spyware on their computers. Now they're whining about the cost of not having anti-spyware?

[MizSterious]

No kidding! Do they really think they're going to create more business by assaulting someone's computer?

[kenth]

In the last month, the majority of problems I've worked on were adware related, either directly from adware or the results from users trying to remove said adware. Surfing porn when one should be working is the biggest cause I've come across. You should see the employees cringe when I tell the owner or office manager that a porn site hijacked the workstation(s).

I use a combination of Ad Aware, Hijack This, and an online scan from spywareinfo.com, which seems to work really well.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/xscan.php

[happydogdesign]

Ad-aware, Spybot, Search and Destroy, and SpywareBlaster are all excellent free programs that will get the junk off your pc, but certain types of spyware will download harmless sounding programs that will continue to update and download nasty stuff even after you eliminate the bugs.

ZoneAlarm®, in addition to being a good firewall, also can be set to require permission for any program trying to access the internet. Many of these bugs are given file names similar to legitimate Windows processes, and this feature can help track them down.

The following sites are good resources for finding and separating the bad stuff from the real Task List processes

Kephyr has a great Spyware and Adware Encyclopedia and a lot of other info.

Andrew Clover also has a great spyware, adware, and parasite info page

The Windows Process Library helps sort it out what is going on in your processor's background, and Answers That Work also has loads of info including Task List Programs

I found that the Keenvalue_112 updator snuck into my program files, and I tracked it down with ZoneAlarm and manually removed it-It would download more nasties everytime I logged on to the web, even though I removed them. My boss's kids had their PC so clogged with junk that they were unable to open IE. I was able to clean it with the above programs, and the latest free version of SpywareBlaster now protects Mozilla as well.

[tiamat]

Per our conversation this morning!

[Arkie2]

ping for later

[Space Wrangler]

Bookmarking your post.