Hey so I'm safe surfing the net right??

Raulandpinboy

<font color=blue>Table-dancing auctioneer<br><font
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Jul 15, 2001
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Hi kids today was my lets learn something new on the internet day so I learned about Spy ware, and Ad ware and thought I would share it with my friends and family.

What is Spy Ware & Ad ware you ask?

Spyware & Ad ware are files that are installed on your computer without your knowledge. They allow companies to monitor your Internet browsing patterns and even allow companies to inundate you with those annoying "pop up" ads! Most people are familiar with freeware, shareware, cookies, media players, interactive content, and file sharing. What they may not realize is that some of the aforementioned may contain code or components that allow the developers of these applications and tools to actually collect and disseminate information about those using them.

They can track your surfing habits, abuse your Internet connection by sending this data to a third party, profile your shopping preferences, hijack your browser start page or pages, alter important system files, and can do this without your knowledge or permission. The security and privacy implications of these exploits should be quite obvious and undesirable on any system or network! These files could also allow a third party vendor to monitor your email activity.
The really bad one is called Xupiter this program is more than simple annoyance. Your privacy is being invaded. Xupiter has the ability to install more software in your machine without your consent. What you are doing on your computer is being watched right now. There are companies that know you are looking at this page. They know what you typed to your family, friends and co-workers. They know what you are emailing to people. They watch your IMs. Hackers are watching to capture your credit card numbers, passwords, and other personal information. The online world is no longer safe. (did I make you nervous? Good)
I’m sure you all have picked up some sort of spy ware or Ad ware along the way. I work in a big office with lots of computers so I know I have workers surfing the net its human nature so I’m sure some of our PC’s are loaded wit them.

Okay Ed what can we do our PC’s are running sluggish, and we are tired of all this pop up and website trash we’re getting.

Well it’s a two fold answer one is clean it all out, but you have to know what you are doing in order to do this. The simple answer is buying a program to do it for you.

I tried a few of them out today and found the best and easiest to use was SpyHunter from the Enigma Software group. http://www.enigmasoftwaregroup.com/ They have a program that’s easy to use and its not bad price wise $29.95.

But before you go crazy buying software try the free Spyhunter scanner it will tell you what kind of Spy software is in your computer and how bad it is, I like it because it has a little window that tells you information about the file or program it finds so you can make a determination as to whether it’s a good file or not. Pretty much you can say that if it shows up on the scanners window you need to get rid of it.

You can get the free scanner here…

http://www.enigmasoftwaregroup.com/Spyhunter_download/spyhunterS.exe

If you think you are pretty good with your PC, you can really use the scanner to locate the spyware files and then just delete them yourself, but if you don’t know how to poke around inside you hard drive, or your registry don’t even think about it, buy the software and let it do it for you, or marry a techie type of person, or flirt shamelessly with the techie next door. This will work for women more then it will for men.

If you don’t think you can handle the seek and destroy, buy the software look around but I found SpyHunter the easiest to use, press a button and it finds them, then press another button and they go away.

Well I hope I didn’t scare you all that badly and I hope I gave you some insight into the world of surfing, or as its quickly becoming the world of lurking.
 
Hey! I make some reasonable cash cleaning out peoples computers of spy ware and the like. If everyone goes out and does it themselves, what will I do ;).

I like using the program Spy Sweeper from WebRoot (www.webroot.com) to clean out spy ware. It's simple to use and does a good job.

Updating and scanning for Spy Ware/Ad ware on a regular basis is as important as mainting your anti-virus scanning and definitions.

Brian
 
A product called Ad-aware is not too bad. And if you happen to install a peer-to-peer file share software such as Kazaa, it does a good job rooting it off your system. Kaz is known to be very invasive to your computer so make sure you know what you are getting into before you go off and download stuff from the net.


Chuck
 
I'm kidding vomit clean up technician and washer repairman is a cool proffesion.

Here's my take guys

Spy Sweeper found things that were not even there and missed some things I put there.

Ad-aware is pretty good but kept missing things, I ran it like 5 times and each time it got something else it missed before.

Spy Hunter is good it caught a lot of stuff that the others missed the scanner is great it lets you see what your missing with the others. easy to use nice for the newbies.

Spybot its freeware and works very well its hard to work it speaks in techno babble but works great. but it keeps missing the gigatech items in the registry.

if it were me I would go with Spyhunter. you can maybe get it for free from the Kazaa store if you dare. :teeth:

Disclaimer:

I am not now nor ever implying that you should get software for free from other sources, break down and pay the stinking $29.00 and run the licensed version it comes with free updates and tech support.
 

Well, Ed, I can tell you this much... :teeth:

Brian's currently running a scan with SpyHunter as I type this on our other desktop computer...

Like he always tells me, you can never have too many programs in your arsenal to fix your clients' problems! :teeth:

I'm sure he'll let you know what his results are later on! ;)

Sandy (et al)
 
So I tested Spy Hunter, Spy Sweeper, Ad Aware and Spy Bot.

Spy Hunter located 80 nasties, including identifying an Acrobat Reader registry entry - which I found to be rather interesting. It failed however to detect the Alexa Toolbar, it may not consider it to be spyware since the Alexa Toolbar is placed there by IE, but it can be easily hijacked by others. It also identified netzip which is a Netscape download aid as spy ware, which it may very well be. A lot of download aids function as spy ware.

Spy Sweeper found 68 nasties, including the Alexa Toolbar, it found all but two of the spy ware cookies that Spy Hunter located, plus about a dozen or so others that Spy Hunter did not detect.

Ad Aware located 59 spy ware cookies. It found most of the same cookies that the other two had identified, plus some others that they missed.

Spy Bot found far viewer parasites than the other three. A grand total of only 37. It did however identify a Microsoft Media Player registry entry as undesirable.

What to do, what to do?

Much like anti-virus software you can not solely trust just one, you need to scan with at least two different programs. I bet you didn't know that? Yup no one program will catch all of the viruses that are out there and no one spy/ad ware program will find all of the nasties.

There is not much you can do about the spy ware being placed on your machine. Any site that runs banner or pop up ads will place some form of spy ware on your computer. Even sites that aren't running ads can be tracking you, some innocently to provide a better customer experience, others not so innocently.

So between Ed and I have we scared you enough? No? How about if I pointed you to a site that will show you how vulnerable your non-firewall protected system is to hackers.

Brian
-Disboarding Nerd

This post was posted wirelessly and Live From Little Red. Sandy is driving while I posting.
 












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