Sick of Spies

[Lilith]

I had gotten some nasty little spy on my system that was making my surfing a living hell. It changed my homepage and kept making popups like crazy. Sooooooooooo I downloaded Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download)

Ran it and got rid of a zillion little buggers on my system. It was very interesting to see how much crap I had gathered. Just thought I'd pass it along cause I know I have spoken to a couple others who have had similar troubles.

I am also off to readjust my security setting :D

[jennaflower]

bad bugs... bad bad bugs... glad to hear you have been successful squashing them :)

[SuccubusKitty]

another program that's pretty decent to use is AdAware. I run it at least once a week and squash upwards of 70 or 80 at a time....LOVE TO KILL THOSE THINGS!

[cowgirltease]

yeah I have spybot and ad aware. They don't mess with me!;)

[jennaflower]

dang.. 170 buggers in mine.. gone now :) The world is a better place :) Thanks again Lilith..

[Lilith]

YVW..bet your system runs a bit faster now too:D

[Ryan²]

I'm on a 27.4GB H/D Laptop here, and with 23GB free, it might be worth running it. Every last byte helps. Nice one Lilith.

[Sharni]

I use SpyBot.....just a word of warning.....

Some things that you may use on your system may require the Spies to work.... :)

[Vigil]

Thanks Lil and guys.

These wankers piss me off to hell and back - you know my normal mild-mannered disposition but I would like to get the lovely people who do all these bugs in a quiet dark room!

Lil, I got the pop up and change of home page - its like being molested!

[Lilith]

You are right Sharni! I made sure and read the help before I used it. It helps you to know what you want gone and what you may need.

Vigil, I am still having trouble getting rid of mine...everytime I think it's gone, it's back!

[Cobalt]

Wouldn't it be SSOOOOOOOOOOO nice to be able to return them and have them constantly screw up there computers like they do everyone elses?

[LixyChick]

TY for this Lil! I had over 180 of the nasty buggers.......almost all were bad ones too!

Did you immunize against them too? Maybe that'll keep um away Lil!?

[Vigil]

Vigil, I am still having trouble getting rid of mine...everytime I think it's gone, it's back! [/B][/QUOTE]

Mine's returned too!

What can we do?

[Sharni]

You must be downloading it....or it is required by a program on your system

[FussyPucker]

Now lilith this is what happens when you install programs like grokster ;) naughty girl!

Most of the things picked up by Ad-aware and other programs are only cookies which you don't really need to worry about. It's the annoying things like "MyBar" that gets added to your web browser and other programs that redirect your search to websites added by the spyware. I ended up looking through the windows registry to get rid of a few of the little buggers.

I found that the P2P software Limewire has less spyware in and it's pretty easy to get rid off.

YES I've got ADSL now I'm perving at the speed of light woo hoo :D

[musketeer]

I use both of those mentioned above as well as Norton AV2004 which has anti adware/spyware stuff built in. And if your using P2P software I'd recommend Kazzalite - it's been tweeked to remove all the built in adware

[Grumble]

I use a program called pestpatrol that also checks for trojans and worms as well as the pests.

It doesnt like Kazaa at all and identifies all of those files as potential pests.

Having been mercilessly hacked back in the days when I was naively unaware of nasties on the net, I also run a firewall and anti virus software that I update constantly and also put in all the windows updates as they come out.

[darogle]

Another loyal fan of spybot here too. I hate having anyone poking their grubby little software where it shouldn't be....namely my computer.

[Lilith]

I have to tell you I have been in pop up hell lately. Nothing, even Spybot could get rid of this thing that attached itself to IE.

CoolWeb Shredder (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/cwshredder.zip) finally got it the hell out of my system. Then it suggested I check with Windows and sure enough a patch has been developed to prevent this specific, persistent little bug from getting back in.

[Cheyanne]

What I want to know if how in the heck do I get all of this spam in my email when I never requested it be sent to me? One day, I was in pop-up hell and I noticed that the majority of the spam that I am getting is from those stupid popups!!! How did they get my email address???? Yesterday I got 50 messages from the same place!!!

**Stomps feet**

[Catch22]

SpySweeper is another good one and free. It is also a good idea to have JAVA off when your going to sites you have not been to before. A lot of these things are JAVA.

[Cheyanne]

Daaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmm... had 152 of them little buggers!!!!! Thanks for the link Lil!!! Guess Adaware missed a few! I also got the shreader!!!