Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Spyware Programs

I have to tell you all about my few day's in computer hell.

To make a long story short I had some spyware on my computer that for the life of me I could not get rid of. It was changing my homepage, popping up all sorts of IE screens trying to sell me something etc etc etc I loaded and ran the following programs trying to get rid of it:

Ad-Aware
SpyZooka
Microsoft Antispyware
Spyware Blaster
XoftSpy

and one more that I can't remember. At the end of it all NONE of the above got rid of it. One of the last ones I tried did and that was a program called Ewido.

For any of you who are in the spyware battle, try this program as it is the best I have seen by far.

Glad to hear that you got rid of the spyware. I use Firefox and highly recommend it to everyone. Also, I run two programs Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy and those can get rid of pretty much anything.

Glad to hear that you found something to take charge of that spy ware junk Never, we've been using Webroot Spy Sweeper for several months and it seems to do a fine job of keeping that nasty unwanted stuff out of the system...so far!

Spybot Search & Destroy was the other one that I had tried.

For some reason this spyware was a total pain and nothing knew what to do with it.

Wow, I have yet come across spyware that that combination would not clean... but browser hijacks are the worst. I'm glad you got rid of it no matter what program you used.

Of course, if you really wanted to get rid of the problem there's always linux. I have not had a single instance of spyware in linux yet. I run a dual boot gentoo linux / windows machine... I always use linux unless I have to run a program that will only run on windows. Now, if you really want to go to the extremes then there's always no internet connection... but then there woud be no axiom forum so I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work.

Using Firefox instead of IE basically removes 90% of the ways spyware can get onto your computer. That reason alone should be enough to convert you.

Aside from the spyware reason, I really think the best reason to switch to firefox is tabbed browsing. I don't think I could live without it. IE v7 will have tabbed browsing but then you still have the spyware issues. Whenever I use another computer that only has IE I find myself still right clicking the link and looking for the "Open Link in New Tab" button, or middle clicking.

Panda is a bad Mofo too, it found what no other spyware removers could find and removed them very quickly. It was a huge download compared to others like spybot and adaware. I am talking about the pay version not the freeware.

My company uses the yearly subscription-based CounterSpy software by Sunbelt. It does a great job and has kept about 200 computers spyware free for the last 7 months. It has active blocking, so it keeps spyware from getting installed. And if spyware gets past that, it also scans and removes files automatically every day.

A bit off topic here, but Sony BMG has started installing rootkits with their copy protected CDs. For you non-techies, these are programs that hide themselves from the operating system (in this case Windows) and users and change core system files. In other words, they could be considered viruses. These rootkits are poorly written and could allow (more) malicious code to get on the system. There is also no uninstaller or good way to remove them. Sony's line is that this is to prevent unauthorized copying of their media. My line is don't buy Sony CDs. Here's an article/editorial on the subject.

Along those same lines root kits are used by worms. There's currently one (probably more) circulating on AIM. Here's the link to the /. article. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/31/0120251&tid=220&tid=215 From there you can click the link in the summary to go to the full article. Root kits are pretty nasty and its disturbing that BMG would be using them.

Okay, I'm really surprised by you guys. I would have thought the members of this board would be all over Sony like a pack of rabid wolves. Surely I'm not the only one who finds this treatment of their customer base completely reprehensible. Sony's feeble capitulation yesterday and the distribution of the "patch" not only misses the point, IMHO, it sends a strong signal that they have every intention of continuing to use and develop these types of DRM systems.

Thoughts, anyone?

I'd say we'd all better get used to the content that we have, or get used to paying for it every time we want to watch it. Unless we're careful and stop letting companies get away with this.

I too, have had a similar experience. With ONE excpetion, I have found that XP with SP2, combined with NAV and Ad-Aware and maybe Spybot S&D takes care of all spyware and viruses (of course, making sure that every product has all the latest updates), but I too had one PC where, no matter what I tried, the spyware (or whatever it was) could not be eliminated.

Thanks for the info.

Check out some of my favorite tools:
http://www.answersthatwork.com/
http://www.ghisler.com/
(Total Commander)
http://www.winguides.com/tweak/
(Tweak manager)
http://www.ccleaner.com/

We have had very good success here with the Microsoft AntiSpyware beta product. This is a product of a company (Giant) that was bought by MS recently. The Monolith hasn't managed to screw it up yet. The combo of Symantec Antivirus Corporate and MS AntiSpyware has kept us spyware free for quite awhile. It did a good job cleaning up systems when we first deployed the product as well. People around here have learned to be careful with their browsing habits because we will blow away and reimage machines with
persistent/unsolvable spyware problems. That is a risk you take in allowing complete, unmonitored, unrestricted internet access.

The Mac Mini on my office desk often points and laughs at the PCs under my desk whenever a new anti-virus signature file or anti-spyware update, or MS patch rolls in.

Same with my Slackware boxes. How the IT industry ever got neck deep into Microsquish is beyond me. 10 years in the industry and I meet maybe 2 in 10 folks who really like the MS solution. I guess I shouldn't have taken this job with a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider/Gold Partner, huh?

To reply to my own reply, I can see it will be very hard to dig out of this hole. There are simply too many people invested in MS-centric products. We use Shavlik to automate the patch process so we don't have to spend so much time keeping up on security holes and bugfixes. And it costs money. Symantec AV Corporate costs money. Everybody has a finger in the pie. Meanwhile our linux servers have an average continuous uptimes of over 2 years. The king of uptime hasn't been rebooted since we moved into our new office over 3 years ago. On the other hand, just today I had to stay after hours and reboot ALL of our Windows servers to finish installing patches.

I will second, triple and quadruple the recommendations by others to start using Firefox and STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER. It is the worse piece of crap browser out there. I seriously believe Microsoft leaves their browser the way it is because they get payoffs by spamming companies to leave it that way.

Firefox is a superior browser in everyway when it comes to security and stopping spam. With Firefox I use Lavasoft Ad-Aware and Spybot. I think these are all you need. I almost never get spam or popups of any kind. I also have the Norton Suite which has extra protection against popups and can even disable flash ads.

If you are cleaning your system out, I recommend Ad-Aware and Spybot and start using Firefox immediately. Also download Webroot SpySweeper. It is an excellent spyware program better than the others I listed, but it has a subscription fee. However, it has a 15 day full access trial. Use it a couple times during its trial to get your computer clean and you may not ever need it again.

Conveinent links:

Firefox
Lavasoft Ad-Aware
Spybot
Webroot Spysweeper

The truly amusing thing is that now Microsoft has designated this stuff as malware and their anti-spyware software will remove it. Heh heh heh...

I found this on www.bash.org, it's a great website for funny IRC quotes. Check out the latest and top 100.

I will write on a huge cement block "BY ACCEPTING THIS BRICK THROUGH YOUR WINDOW, YOU ACCEPT IT AS IS AND AGREE TO MY DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS WELL AS DISCLAIMERS OF ALL LIABILITY, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL, THAT MAY ARISE FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THIS BRICK INTO YOUR BUILDING." And then hurl it through the window of a Sony officer and run like hell.

Hehe that's funny!

Surprised no one mentioned Hijack this
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Funny, I was just about to post a recommendation for HJT. It was the only thing that saved my son's computer.

HOWEVER, it is worth mentioning that you can really screw things up with HJT. It's not that user friendly, and you should really read through the instructions and recommended process on the website.

But it did fix the problem!

Regards,
Rich

Just thought I'd let you all know that F-Secure has a rootkit detection and removal tool, currently in beta, available as a free download.

F-Secure Blacklight