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.

[Carolinamom]

I have Adware and AVG6...........Would adding SpyBot be superfulous?

[XJarhead]

I paid $19.95 for Webroot's SpySweeper, and it was worth every penny. Updates, scans, cleans, and the tech support guys helped me with workarounds for two particularly persistent little buggers. Best investment on my PC I've ever made.

Not saying the free ones aren't good, but I'm suspecting there's something extra if you upgrade, and there's a reason they charge for it.

[HusbandMan]

Shhhhhh....If that gets out, us Mac users will have to start struggling with this junk, too. And as an IT geek, I do mean struggle. Sometimes it's easier just to give the end user a good whack(verbal or otherwise), rebuild their machine(without trying to recover their "important" files), and move on.

[Quix]

Got Ad Aware successfully downloaded.

And it scanned etc. well the first time or 3.

Now, when I reboot, it seems like when I press the scan button, nothing will happen.

Not sure why.

[Lael]

Sometimes it's easier just to give the end user a good whack(verbal or otherwise), rebuild their machine(without trying to recover their "important" files), and move on.

That is why I NEVER keep any user files on the system...especially the ones that use Image Disks for restoration!

[Golden Eagle]

There's a very simple trick that will block most if not all incoming spyware from Internet Explorer. Go to tools, internet options, privacy, advanced, and set to block all "third party cookies". If some have already installed, you'll need to clean those out with an extractor (recommend Ad-Aware), but if you make the change no more should be able to install. At least not any yet on my systems.