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Can You Trust Your Spyware Protection?
PCWorld.com through Yahoo! News ^
| May 31, 2005
| Andrew Brandt
Posted on 05/31/2005 6:41:03 PM PDT by El Conservador
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Quicktime? Real? For who are they? Ahhh...
Mplayer has made me forget of them..
To: savedbygrace
It may be until MS got thru modifying it for their own use.
To: PotatoHeadMick
Spybot fixed the "5 registry keys found" error many months ago.
Look up Spyware Tools at www.majorgeeks.com site, and you will see a listing for spybot-tx update.
Or just jump to Spybot 14r2 and have all of the updates.
83
posted on
05/31/2005 11:29:37 PM PDT
by
texas booster
(Bless the legal immigrants!)
To: El Conservador
For some reason, I couldn't get the MS Beta to load on my new Compaq. I then loaded Spybot, which totally blew me out of the water. I must include that I already had Norton AV, and Internet security. And Spy subtract. But Spybot did repair it's errors, and I seem to be no worse off. I then De-Installed Spybot. I was running that program on my previous computer, with no problems.
84
posted on
06/01/2005 12:16:13 AM PDT
by
de Buillion
(Ready, Fire, Aim!)
To: passionfruit
Had to use the restore dick and lost everything on the computer. sometimes inadvertent typos make surfing the web an interesting exercise in avoiding spewing one's Coffee all over one's key board and monitor.
Did that "restore dick" come with instructions???
85
posted on
06/01/2005 2:10:18 AM PDT
by
Swordmaker
(tagline now open, please ring bell.)
To: El Conservador; All
I use Firefox. Click the link and give it a try.
=================================================
|
Browser Wars, take two various FR links | 12-22-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1306815/posts
...and let your compiler of links drop out of Lurk & Link mode for comment and advice:
Ditch IE. Honest to God, almost anything else will give you fewer problems. Try and compare- use IE, then run Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy... then try another browser and repeat. You will be stunned at the garbage IE attracts.
Keep your OS updated & patched.
Run a hardware firewall-- with today's LAN's, it's easy. You need a hardware firewall.
|
86
posted on
06/01/2005 2:47:09 AM PDT
by
backhoe
(-30-)
To: TommyDale; All
And Microsoft catches things that Spybot and Ad-Aware misses! The problem with all these is that you really need to use them all in order to clean everything. Why can't someone put all of them together?Yep, you need more than one to catch all the garbage out there. FWIW, these two online scanners also look for spyware:
Panda Online Scan
Trend Micro Online Scan
87
posted on
06/01/2005 2:55:29 AM PDT
by
backhoe
(-30-)
To: shattered
Use cleanpar (Google it and should be able to find and download it) and wipe that sucker clean. Then......do a fresh install of XP. Been there, done that.......often.
89
posted on
06/01/2005 9:29:47 AM PDT
by
eureka!
(It will not be safe to vote Democrat for a long, long, time...)
To: texas booster
Thanks that's great info, I never knew it was a fault in Spybot. Any info on whether the extremely slow starting up of my pc when I turn it on is due to having installed Norton Anti-virus? The problem started around the same time.
To: PotatoHeadMick
It is possible that NAV and McAfee security suites are to blame for a slow starting PC, but it is usually due to multiple problems beside one program.
Use Spybot, Advanced Mode, Tools, System Startup and see what is being fired off when your system starts. You haven't lived until MS starts downloading updates, your antivirus has a major update, Adobe tries to auto-download and another half dozen programs try immediate checks for updates, while your virus/spyware scanner checks everything for validity. I turn off auto-updates on all of my systems, but I will occasionally keep the Windows updates on for a difficult client.
When I was a certified "Internet security specialist" we felt that Sophos AV was the best AV for corporations. Now I use mostly AVG Free, since it's memory footprint and network usage is small. Being free, I can give it to all of my home customers without violating license agreements.
91
posted on
06/01/2005 9:56:22 PM PDT
by
texas booster
(Bless the legal immigrants!)
To: relictele
WEATHERBUG IS NOT SPYWARE NOR ADWARE.... Facts are simple, facts are true, facts don't do what I want them to.(From a Talking Heads song) With apologies to those of you who really have it out for WeatherBug, like "rdb3", the good news is it's a free country and yes, there are other weather apps out there you can use for weather data-but whether you love our product or hate our product, the fact is simply that WeatherBug is not and has never been spyware. For the record, spyware tracks web surfing activity and sometimes reads what is on the users hard drive. WeatherBug is not capable of tracking your overall web use or deciphering anything on your hard drive. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE MAJOR SPYWARE DETECTOR AMONG THE TOP 30 THAT CALLS US SPYWARE- BECAUSE I TEST THEM EVERY SINGLE THURSDAY- AND BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SPYWARE. Spbyot, Adaware, Norton (which in the interest of full disclosure does call us adware- more on that in a second), McAfee, Pest Patrol, Aluria, Microsoft Antispy (beta), Spykiller, Spybloc, SpyHunter, Spysweeper, SpyDoctor, Zerospy, Counterspy, AVG Antivirus, A-Squared, Pc-Cillin- and I could go on....not a single one calls us spyware. so let's consider that point closed unless somehow every one of those programs, and 25 more I could list, all are 100% wrong. Adware- now that's trickier b/c some of you define adware as "anything with ads"- well by that definition, AIM, Yahoo messenger, realplayer, weather channel's application, accuweather, hotmail, etc. could all be considered adware, as would our free product (we have an ad-free version for $19.95 a year). However, with the exception of Norton, most companies don't define adware that broadly (and when we asked Norton why they didn't list AIM as adware they stumbled, hemmed and hawed and admitted they didn't have a good answer. Expect to see us removed from Norton's list soon- hopefully by end of June or early July 2005). if all these companies flagged AIM, Yahoo messenger, etc. as "adware threats"- how long before everyone would stop trusting ANYTHING they listed- it would be a 'boy who cried wolf syndrome" and REAL adware would get ignored. People would stop believing anything that pulled up if AIM was always getting flagged as "adware". MOST IT profs. (including hundreds that I met at NetWorld/Interop- the largest US IT show), feel that adware is best defined as "programs that serve ads (often pop ups) based on user surfing habits." 1) WeatherBug serves no pops in the version we released last year- June 2004 2) WeatherBug has never served ads based on user surfing habits- we have a proprietary system that allows users to SELECT a sponsor from about 10 different categories. 3) the 2nd definition of adware - based on USER SURFING HABITS is exactly what WHENU and GATOR do- and that folks, is what adware is all about. I surf to Expedia to book a flight and WHAM!! I get hit with an annoying pop ad for priceline.com asking me to put a bid on a flight at their site. I DIDN'T WANT PRICELINE. If I did, I'd have gone there. THAT IS ADWARE. here are the facts- WeatherBug owns and operates the worlds largest network of weather stations and is one of the top 10 Internet properties in daily reach according to Media Metrix. Our data is: - viewed by over 80 million households a month, both on-line and off-line - accessible to The Department of Homeland Security for live, real-time plume modeling and weather data, in the event of an attack on our country, and our weather stations are at 15 Coast Guard bases, the US Naval Academy, Quantico Marine Base and USAF Academy - used by dozens of city, county and state emergency managers in assessing the impact of current weather conditions on hazardous situations and natural disasters, - in 8,000 schools and universities across the US, helping teach math and science along with our WeatherBug curriculum which won a Smithsonian Laureate and was selected by Media & Methods Magazine as 2002s Education Technology of the Year, and chosen by District Administration Magazine as a Top 100 product (2003); - used by meteorologists at over 100 TV stations to bring neighborhood weather forecasts and conditions to communities every day. You may not like us and if you don't, by all means, d/l another weather app. Yes, you'll be getting weather from an airport that could be far away and only updates once an hour, instead of live, local weather. But maybe for you that's good enough. For 8000 schools, the US military and dozens of major corporations, they need live, LOCAL weather which is why they come to us. But if you use someone else's program or not, all I ask is that you get the facts right about us. As for rb3's comment that I surf the web all day- 1) it's folks like him who don't actually check the facts and spout off ridiculous rumors in between game of Rainbow 6 with their headsets on too tightly that make it necessary to spend ANY time rebutting this stuff and 2) it's part of my job to correct misimpressions about our company, because that is what good companies do- they rebut rumors, lies, and innuendos about them.....a radical concept I admit, but we kinda like it. Unlike rb3, I'll post my contact info if anyone actually wants to write to me- jay@weatherbug.com or Jay Hoffman, customer support manager 12410 Milestone Center Drive #300, Germantown, MD 20876
To: weatherbugjay
Goody gumdrops - you can cut and paste! Nice text wall! How about some hard returns or other basic formatting? If Weatherbug is so terrific as you claim - why not ask some of your crack programming staff for some help in posting?
Why are you and your company so paranoid about WeatherBug's image? Could it be a guilty conscience? Is it possible that the technical support nightmares, system slowdowns and generally unclean uninstall routine(s) have something to do with it, along with your annoying unrequested browser launches when the uninstall is run? What about the cloying, 'Weatherbug is great, why are you removing it?' BS? Does Microsoft, Lotus/IBM, Adobe et al ask for this information? Is it any of their business or yours?
Many of us have done the Google research on you, your company and have seen your photo and many of your (no longer) private e-mails. We know your methods and your cynical, clock-punching view of your job and duties. You may think you're fighting the good fight, but the informed among us will never be fooled. Guess what? We don't have to rely on rumors, lies, or innuendo. We have seen the aftermath of cute, little, good ol' WeatherBug on too many systems and it's not pretty.
Being a good company man and infesting as many web forums as you can find with your holier-than-thou BS means absolutely nothing. It's like Colonel Sanders saying KFC is good - completely meaningless and without credibility. Mentioning AOL et al hardly elevates you to a place among the angels - AIM has its own problems, as do many other shareware/freeware titles. However, their relatively clean troubleshooting and removal procedures further expose WeatherBug as the worst of a bad lot.
Whining and/or bullying the spyware scanner companies into leaving WeatherBug off their respective blacklists is a fool's errand. These companies fear lawsuits and other harrassment from entities who will no doubt claim 'damages' from being blacklisted. At the end of the day, it's of little consequence to them who's listed and who's not, and they certainly won't risk financial exposure when they can omit one mouse that roars.
Since you're so altruistically committed to the free flow of accurate information, how about we follow you around the net and inform users how to combat WeatherBug's ads with host file and firewall settings? After all, your main concern is helping schools and the military find out about the weather, right?
Please post links or information that confirm your ownership and operation of weather stations - numbers, locations, equipment lists, etc. It's hard to imagine the untold millions that the US and world governments have spent on weather data collection in the last 100-200 years - would you have us believe that an ADWARE COMPANY has expended the same amount of money in just a few short years? Even the Weather Channel relies on observations from NOAA et al - it would be a waste of money to build 100% redundant facilities. Did you personally help set up the anemometers and hygrometers? It would make a cat laugh.
By the way, you're identifying/responding to the wrong poster and your attempt at invoking a humorous stereotype is as factually incorrect as your FUD, name-dropping, 'awards' and statistics are meaningless.
Thanks for taking the bait and stopping by to join Freep to post your boilerplate, but my customers, associates and friends have already concluded that WeatherBug is to be avoided at all costs.
93
posted on
06/20/2005 10:54:15 AM PDT
by
relictele
(If you can't read this, thank the NEA/UFT)
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