[Ksnavely]

Spyware is some of the most annoying s**t out there. I have 3 programs (adaware spybot and spysweeper, and special content in my registry that prevents many of the more common ones from getting on mypc. I use the programs about twice a month and no matter how careful I am, I always seem to find new programs on my computer (not counting cookies).

I consider myself pretty technologically savvy and I have this hard of a time battling this stuff. I can't imagine how computers belonging to grandma's and other segments of the population who are typically not as computer literate are doing. There needs to be some legislation on spyware.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I spend a couple of days over Thanksgiving, at my daughters house in Vegas trying to get the stuff cleaned off, finally just wiped it all, reformatted everything , rebuilt XP Home and told her not to let the teenager on the machine again.

[wrathof59]

Please provide a link for spysweeper, thanks

[wrathof59]

Please provide a link for spysweeper, thanks

[FreedomPoster]

>>>I can't imagine how computers belonging to grandma's and other segments of the population who are typically not as computer literate are doing.

I've touched a few of those machines. Fundamentally, they're sucking wind, and pretty bad. I've pretty savvy, and I've come across several machines where the answer is to reinstall from the recovery disks that shipped with the machine, if they exist/can be found.

The whole thing stinks. I'm for capital punishment for spammers/virus writers/spyware disseminators. I am not joking, serious as a heart attack.

[goldstategop]

Its worse than spam cause you can delete spam or filter it out but these trojans and nasties are almost impossible to remove once they get installed on your computer - especially CoolWebSearch, Lop, NCase2, and VX2. They install themselves deep in the bowels of Windows so that merely deleting the programs often does NOT work - the next time you reboot the scumware reinstalls itself. That's why an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.