Posted on 10/31/2004 10:16:57 AM PST by quidnunc
David Eckstein turned on his computer one day and launched his Web browser, just as he had every day. This time, however, CNN.com did not automatically open. Instead, the page was a search engine he'd never heard of.
Eckstein tried changing the browser settings back to CNN but the search engine would return whenever he rebooted. Finally, he just gave up.
The San Francisco marketing consultant is yet another victim of spyware, an amorphous class of software that mostly gets onto people's computers without their knowledge. So resource-hungry, it often renders the machines unusable.
"It makes you want to throw your computer out the window," Eckstein said.
In the past year, the problem has become epidemic as people spend more time online and spyware developers get more aggressive.
"It makes spam look like a walk in the park," said Bob Bowman, chief executive of Major League Baseball's Internet unit, which in June started banning new advertisers from using such techniques.
As part of a government-backed study, technicians visited Jenna Dye recently in Young Harris, Ga., and found 1,300 spyware-related items on her machine.
"It would shut itself down in the middle of doing stuff. We had lots of pop-ups. The (CD-ROM) drawers would pop open," the mother of two complained. "It's frustrating. We spent $1,800 on our computer and we didn't want to use it."
Until the machine was cleaned up, Dye and her husband would make 2 1/2 hour trips to the nearest mall to avoid shopping online. "We use it every day now again," she said.
Spyware was found on the computers of 80 percent of participants in the study, conducted by America Online Inc. and the National Cyber Security Alliance.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Part of me wants the Mac market share to grow so there'll be more Mac games written while the other part dreads the consequences of this.
THANK YOU, Drago...MUCH more clear than the software's own site!!! I owe ya one!!!
Lots of good tools mentioned here, but I have found that cautions are in order with two of them:
1. Hijack This! will cheerfully allow you to remove things you might want to keep. I have the Microsoft 'View Partial Source' applet installed for example. It appears in the scan that HT does- as do a lot of things that I have installed on purpose. If you just remove everything that it presents you with, you might lose some little extras that you like and wanted to keep. Take your time and kill off the stuff that doesn't belong there, rather than taking a blanket approach.
2. AVG is pretty good as an antivirus, but I am not convinced that it will always remove what it finds. I have seen systems that had viruses that an up-to-date AVG install couldn't clean. Other measures had to be taken to remove the infection.
What I do like about AVG is that it has a very small system resource footprint. It doesn't lag your system out like the Big Two tend to. And it isn't constantly squawking for more money.
Does anybody have any good info on the effectiveness of the paid version of AVG?
Another good one you might check out is SpySweeper, available at www.webroot.com
It does a very good job; I own a computer shop, and deal with this stuff all the time. Spysweeper seems to be the best overall to me, but even it leaves things behind that Spybot and Adaware will clean up behind it.
http://www.windowsstartup.com/Startup Inspector for Windows is a Windows platform software that helps Windows user to manage Windows startup applications. On www.windowsstartup.com, there are more than 4,100 known programs in the database. Startup Inspector for Windows can thus provide a consultative information on the programs that are running at your Windows startup process....
Scans all programs that are in the Windows Startup Folder, Registry and provide you with a background information of the program.
Remove harmful programs like spyware, virus, dialers, make your system healthier.
Remove unnecessary programs like reminders, monitors, improve your systems performance.
Also Hijack This is an advanced tool...beginners stay away. It provides very little support and it really is a tool for experts (I'm not one:-)
You are very correct about P2P. If I see a PC come in my shop and there is a Kazza icon on the desktop, I can guarantee it will have a ton of spyware, viruses, and trojans. The Kazaa network is BADLY infected with the stuff.
Spysweeper is very good, and has several checks ( like homepage changes ) that some may find useful.
I'd forgotten about that one- it's good software.
Webroot's Spy Sweeper is great.
Yeah, I finally took Drudge off of the "my favorites" bookmarks.
Pop-up and spyware city over there.
Whatever you do, stay away from Drudge - - I keep up with his stories right here at FR.
Amen Brother! I cringe when I see a computer with AOL installed. After AOL5 or so, that program installs more files than the operating system... Just check the js files before and after intallion.
Oh, that is so much trash talk, Those are two of the best and most useful browser helper objects out there. Sorry you had a bad experience, but you are blaming the wrong programs for any problems you have.
Same with me. Why does Drudge allow this? Everytime I visit his site the same garbage is put on my drive.
The advertisers do it. Drudge is just trying to make a buck through advertising, which in the past would be no great shakes, but when computers came along and people went online, advertisers thought it would be great idea to use the technology to track people - snooping really. So blame it on the parasitic ad agencies oversteping their bounds. Personally, I use FireFox. Works for now.
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