Killing Spyware

[livius drusus]

I came across this fine article (http://www.vbulletin.nl/community/showthread.php?t=5594) during my adventures with vBulletin. It's the best short-n-sweet tutorial about how to kill the evil that is spyware I've seen, and very much worth bookmarking for anyone not so well-versed in the ways of the deveel. :)

Enjoy. :break:

[Shake]

That is a fine article, liv. Thanks.

I've long since transitioned to Firefox, and also use AdAware as well as Spybot S&D (both excellent tools, btw).

Oh yeah, great smilie, btw. Is that in our cache here?

[livius drusus]

That is a fine article, liv. Thanks.

I've long since transitioned to Firefox, and also use AdAware as well as Spybot S&D (both excellent tools, btw).

They are indeed, but the key tool for me and my poor IE cohorts is that monster hijackthis.exe. It's dangerous because it allows people to delete potentially critical files, but if you tread carefully and use it in combination with AdAware and Spybot, it's a truly great fix.

Oh yeah, great smilie, btw. Is that in our cache here?

Of course! It's in the Cogs in the Machine category along with a couple of other compadres. :)

[trendkill]

I only use Spybot S&D, seems to be all I need to get rid of that stuff. I know people who only use Adaware, and they still have spyware anyway. I also keep hearing this rumor that Spybot is itself a perpetrator of spyware. Not sure why people think this, but... :foilhat:

Maybe it's because of the program's malicious-sounding name. Sounds more like a problem than a solution.

[livius drusus]

Spybot is great - better than AdAware, imo - but it can't clear a stubborn hijack. Something like the horrendous Lycos Sidesearch needs a bigger caliber gun to wipe it away.

I hadn't heard that rumor about Spybot being a source of spyware. I'll sniff around and see what I can find.

[freemonkey]

Spybot is great - better than AdAware, imo - but it can't clear a stubborn hijack. Something like the horrendous Lycos Sidesearch needs a bigger caliber gun to wipe it away.


I had to use HijackThis to clear a nasty browser hijack some time ago. It can be daunting to use. I thought I'd bookmarked a site that listed what was necessary to keep, safe to keep and what had to go, but I can't find it.

Anyway, here are some safe sites to go to for help in using HijackThis:
TomCoyote.org (http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/), MajorGeeks.com (http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3155.html)
I can't vouch for this being a "safe" site, but the tutorial looks comprehensive, bleepingcomputer.com (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/index.php?showtutorial=42#intro)
This site thread has links to sites that have reference lists for help in reading, understanding and cleaning HiJack this log results: Security Forums.com (http://www.security-forums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13810)

[livius drusus]

Awesome resources, freemonkey! I've used majorgeeks before but hadn't seen the others. Thanks for scaring them up. :)

[Larry]

I thought the info was good also. So I decided to copy and paste the text of it into a Word document for future reference. Unfortunately, in two attempts to save it to disk my computer locked up tighter than . . . Had to push the on/off button and boot my computer back on.

What gives! Any ideas? Could there be a code built into the article preventing one from copying it?

[livius drusus]

I don't think so, Larry. I was able to save the article in Word both as an rtf and a garden variety doc without a problem. The box it's in is a standard vB fieldset code like the one we have here. I've seen people use special code boxes that don't allow copying, but you just can't select the text in those; there's no crashing your computer once you paste feature that I know of.

:chin:

[Larry]

I don't think so, Larry. I was able to save the article in Word both as an rtf and a garden variety doc without a problem. The box it's in is a standard vB fieldset code like the one we have here. I've seen people use special code boxes that don't allow copying, but you just can't select the text in those; there's no crashing your computer once you paste feature that I know of.

:chin:
Thanks for your response Livius to this concern of mine. I just finished doing a virus scan with none detected. It may just be coincidence and perhaps one of my Microsoft Word system files has been corrupted. I opened a previously saved doc and added some text to it and when saving it my computer once again froze up.

Oh well. I'll figure it out. Thanks.

[trendkill]

I used to have problems copying and pasting things from the Web. The solution in my case was to stop using Internet Explorer.