Sick of Spam? Prepare for Adware

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

[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.