Help Question On: Spyware & Parasite Blockers

11-25-2004 | FrankRepublican

[FrankRepublican]

Does anyone know a good tool to get rid of and block spyware,parasites,adware, viruses and other crap. I think Drudge has it on his web site. I surf but not a huge amount but the crap is getting too much.

These advertising parasites also come as worms, viruses, trohans etc.

I have tried free AdAware 6.0, free Spybot and the latest is the Giant AntiSpyware on a free trial. Giant seems the best but a lot of crap is still there.

I also run Norton (worthless on most of this stuff), Solo (great AV program) plus have used free Panada and AVG in the past.

The Internet is rapidly becoming a waste of time for me. I tried to stick to mainly newsweb sites and links off Drudge. I am thinking of switching to Mozilla's browser as MSFT IE appears to be crap.

Help. Any suggestion appreciated. Also let's give thanks to American trrops protecting us on this day.

[Quix]

Thanks much. Greatly appreciated.

[Quix]

Much appreciate your suggestion. Thanks tons.

[Trinity_Tx]

Well I missed those threads! Bummer. lol

I'm glad you linked to it on the other thread at least. : ) It just looked strange to me because you linked to your code instead of his, and because there are hundreds of posts under his article by other developers ripping him to shreds and saying the same thing I said above. (I had read them before you posted his article to me here.)

I remember these discussions going back to '95. If you'll read the posts there, you'll see not only where he went wrong, but why we prefer clean, standard, non-proprietary code, and browsers that render accordingly. And that's at ZDnet - a haven for MSoft fans.

I'd love it if you'd ping me to the next thread on it. Then we wont be so off topic. ; )

[Capitalism2003]

late night bump

[puppetz]

yeah but the point is, even standard code doesn't render consistantly cross-platform- also his point about an upstart browser demanding all coders change to render properly in their browser is a bit presumptuous is well taken. Still, we get about 4% Firefox hits- we get about as many Konqueror and Enigma (IE type) browsers as we get Mozilla. We get about 8% Opera, but its much more tolerant, although I do have to include code bits in the CSS for div classes since we went to almost all absolute positioning (unlike what he says in his article about using tables, we try to use ab pos more and more exclusively, as you see in the page I linked, there are no tables at all)
no tables at all

plus you can do neat stuff with layering

[puppetz]

crap bad link fixed

[TheSpottedOwl]

I've bookmarked this post, as I have done with a previous one discussing this topic. Unfortunately it is too late for my year old computer. I'm typing this at a friend's house. I need to find my warranty, and see if this hard drive is covered. I'm also going to sit down with a technician and discuss how to prevent this from happening in the future. One way is to keep my son off the computer.

I'm in the long slow process of moving, so I boxed the darn thing up, and it's sitting at a friend's house.

[Quix]

Thanks.

SIGH. GRRRRR. After trying to scan into Photoshop 6.0 and attach the pic to email . . . the first one going seemingly OK . . . the 2nd one and all succeeding ones have Eudora back to crashing totally with an exception fault when I try and attach such a pic.

Photoshop also crashes now, again . . . I think when the memory or some such demands get very large. I have 1.1 GIG RAM. Frustrating.

Thanks for your kind response.

[balrog666]

Just copy 'msconfig.exe' over from the Win98\Windows\System\ folder to the Win2000\WINNT\ folder.

Thanks!

[Xenalyte]

You are much welcome! Feels good to have it working right again, don't it?

[Quix]

Yeah. But it only lasted a few hours!

Sigh.

Thanks,

[Xenalyte]

Same problem?

[Xenalyte]

If you're still having trouble with Ezula, go here.

[XBob]

37 - "I've noticed Drudge giving a lot of unasked for material..."

Drudge has become Pop-up City lately. Especially if you stay any length of time.

I have just about given up on Drudge, and check only briefly, and then make sure that I close the window when I am finished, or pop-ups will continue.

[XBob]

Change your settings and do not accept cookies. Also do not run any un-requested .exe or .com files which come up.

[Capitalism2003]

http://www.dachshundsoftware.com/index.html

Download a copy of Anticrash and run it. They have a utility that can fix specific applications...Just point to the location on your hard drive (example--c:\program files|programx\programx.exe). It can make the alteraions permanent so the program will be more stable and less likely to crash. Worked for me on several occastions.

[Quix]

Thanks tons.

Sounds like a wonderful resource. Will do!

After I finish updating my addy spreadsheet!

Bless you and yours tremendously this season.

[Quix]

All the troubles started with SR2.

I just hate to revert for obvious reasons!

[Capitalism2003]

bump for the weekenend...

And quix, did that anticrash program help you?

[Wooly]

I want to make a comment here that nobody ever makes in the discussions.
It has nothing to do with Windows, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, AOL, Earthlink, or any others excuses. The reason that you have Spy/AD Ware or a virus on your computer is YOU or the OTHER PEOPLE USING YOUR COMPUTER!
Most people spend more time learning how to use a microwave, vcr, or DVD player than they do a computer. As such they make many mistakes, that they then blame on everything but themselves.
I am constantly getting calls from people who are having computer problems from stupid stuff they do. And here is what I normall find.

1. Themes and Screen Savers. Today most of these things come with at least one and sometimes multiple Spy/Adware programs. Additionally, a lot of these programs are poorly written and can cause other problems with your computer.
My advice, stick with the desktop backgrounds and Screen Savers that come on the operating system and you will never have any problems in this area. I personally think that this is one of the more stupid things people do, after all what are you doing on the computer? Staring at Favio or Britney on the desktop, or are you into a program or surfing the net?
2. Animated Cusors, Desktop Assistants, Internet Optimizers, Time Keepers, and other similar stuff.
Not only do most of these programs contain Spy/AdWare, they also add many seconds to the boot-up and program opening times of your computer, and that is even with a very high performance custom built gaming machine.
Again these are, in my mind at least, stupid and useless things people do to their computers. Afterall they are not very entertaining after the first few times, and for someone like me working on your computer they are a royal pain in the butt. Add to this that nobody else that sees you little animated cursor, talking monkey, or any of this stuff is going to be impressed by your witty selection of this junk.
My advice here is the same as the above, use what came with the operating system.

3. Game Channels like Wild Tangent and I am not talking about online game servers, just the shockwave game channels.
These are all spyware.
Advice here is that if you want to play these types of game you can find them without having to download the game channel software at sites like addictinggames.com, clevermedia.com, or at iambored.com.

4. Porn and Actor/Actress websites. If you cannot find FREE PORN that doesn't download a Dialer or other program to your computer on the Internet, then you need to get rid of your computer and go back to looking at Hustler. I mean you can do a search for wood flooring and end up with a list of porn sites. And the same goes for the Celeb. websites that will hit you with pop-ups and other garbage up to and including Dialers.
Advice> If you just have to look at J-Lo's bottom or Brad Pitts package, do an image search with all the filters off on Google.

5. Pop-Ups. I do not understand why people click on Pop-Up Ads. First of all it, to me, is a very slezey way of marketing a product very much like tele-marketing calls.
If I walked up and knocked on your front door, then when you opened the door, I tell you that you can win a million dollars, that I have some free computer software for you, or that I noticed your house has some serious security problems, would you fully trust me? Probably not, but when these things pop-up as an AD on you computer many of you click on them. THERE IS NOTHING FOR FREE and these also are a route for installing Spy/Adware or Dialers on your computer.
I should also mention the catagory of pop-ups that look like they are warnings generated by the operating system on you computer warning you that you need to update your system. First of all there is no Microsoft Update Warning message that states that there are "Important Security or Updates to your System." The standard Microsoft Auto Updater will generate a window that state that there are updates for your system. It will not give you any catagory of the update.
Advice here is never click on a pop-up, learn to close pop-ups using Alt-F4 instead of clicking on them, download and install the Google Toolbar, and turn off the Windows and Internet Explorer auto updates. The reason for the last one is that you do not need any of the updates from MS, except for the critical updates which involve security. Other updates are nothing but added features which you may not need or want, not to mention the fact that MS update of hardware drivers may cause you to have system problems. Instead, go to the Windows Update site and read/choose the updates you need or want.

6. E-Mail imports of Spam and Virus/Trojan Horses. Everbody out there knows the danger of opening attachments or reading Spam E-mails, but the fact that this is still the number one way of distributing a virus, means that many people still don't get it.
I often ask the people who have problems with this,the following. If you go out to your mailbox today and in the mail is a letter addressed to someone else, but it was delivered to you by mistake, DO YOU OPEN IT AND READ IT? Then I ask, do you open up every letter that is definitly an advertisement or solicitation? 100% of the time the person answers no. Then I ask, so why do you open E-Mails that are the same as the above? This one always gets a dumb look and embarassed response.
Advice here, just delete all the stuff that looks like Spam or is from people you do not know. And if you delete something that someone you know actually sent for you to see, ask them to resend it and to make the header more personnel than just New Pictures or something like that. Also go into the Folder Options and click on "unhide File Extensions." This is turned off by default to prevent someone from changing the three character file extension on something and causing problems, but with it off all you will see in an E-Mail Attachment is Pic.jpeg instead of Pic.jpeg.vbs which indicates a visual basic script and hence a program and not a picture.
Another way to reduce Spam is to get a throwaway E-Mail account like Yahoo or Hotmail and use this account whenever possible for places that you need to register with in order to access the site. Finally, if you use OUtlook, turn off the Preview Pane feature as some spams are coded to verify the address as good when they are opened and the preview opens the E-Mail.

7. Peer2Peer File sharing programs like Kazaa and others. Only one thing to do here, QUIT USING THEM AND UNINSTALL THEM. P2P File Sharing is the number 2 source for virus/trojan infections these days, not to mention that the programs come with multiple spy/adware programs (this also goes for freeware programs these days).
Advice here is to use a legal route to get your music and one that I use is www.allofmp3.com the site is in Russia, but is 100% on the level and legal. It is a pay to download site for music (registration is free and it allows you to listen to full songs and albums)but the cost is next to nothing. I have downloaded 3117 songs to date at an average cost of 3.7 cents per song. And they feature online encoding from 128kps to 320kps, plus you have the ability to choose the format including IPOD compatable. They charge by the download's size and not per song. You pay for the download by buying a block of download at a rate of $1.00 USA for each Megabyte. To pay for it you use your credit card with Cyberphat, which is the European version of Paypal. Cyberphat has an excellent reputation and companies like HP and Sony use them. Allofmp3 also pays artist royalties and has copyright permission to do this. The cheapness of this comes from the fact that a AD in Russia sells for a very small amount money, in USA Dollars, compared to here. If you do choose to use this service, download their explorer program at http://stat.allofmp3.com/explorer.shtml as it makes the site more user friendly. Also when you buy a block of download it is yours and does not expire.
By the way this also makes a great cheap Christmas gift.

All of the above are very common causes for computer problems I see, and in each case it was the computer user that caused the problems. It is just a fact that these problems do not just load on their own without your help.
To date I have not had a virus or trojan infection nor do I have Spy/AdWare problems. I use IE, Google toolbar, and an up to date Anti_Virus program. Other than that I just follow the stuff I mentioned above.