Spyware, I bet you have it.

I believe I have my antivirus covered. I am now looking for advice on how to remove and keep off spyware, malware, keyloggers, DOS attacks, dialers, etc., etc.

I have AdAware, SS&D, Spyware Blaster, and Spyware Guard.

I ran Pest Patrols free online scan , and of course it found several things.
I know I can pay and have it downloaded, but are there any stores that carry this thing? ??? I tried BestBuy, Circuit City, Frys(OutPost.com), and CompUSA.

After many hours reading site after site I came up with 5 products I am interested in.

Pest Patrol The review link is at the bottom.

Webroot Spysweeper Here's a review at Download.com

Spyware Eliminator Here's a review at Download.com

Secret Surfer Pro


Internet Cleanup Here's a review at Download.com . This product has a 100% negative rating(Only 1 review).

Here's the link to PestPatrol. Download.com

I also had HiJack This. I downloaded it from majorgeeks.com Something was not letting me open it. So I either uninstalled it or it disappeared on its own.

So my questions are:
1 Where do I get PestPatrol? Does it have to be downloaded or can I buy it at a store?

2 Does anyone have opinions on the above products?

3 Is there anything I should add or take away from the list?

In repsonse to the thread's title;

I bet that I don't.

I run a Linux system with java turned off.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Last time I checked the only spyware I had was microsofts internet search engine and some tracking cookies. I now track cookies myself and have almost none and find way too many sites want to slap 3 or more cookies on you system and leave them there, some also put your IP address in the cookies which I mostly do not care for especially in sites that you are not buying anything nor visiting the forums.

There are some websites that use counters etc that put cookies that they later read at other sites telling them where you have been and what you have been doing.

There are so many cookies and impossible for me to determine what is a "good" cookie and a "bad" cookie and none of the cookie manager programs I tried could always get it right, either.

Oh, also for those who promote alternate browsers then IE, I recently gave firefox a good workout and like other alternate browsers I have tried in the past, I still came across sites it could not render correctly. Also and this was probably operator inexperience in my part, I could not get winamp to launch when choosing a station from shoutcast. It seems everything is optimized for microsoft products and there are compromises when choosing alternative products.

Before you run any spyware scans be sure to delete your temporary Internet files, delete all of your cookies, clear your history cache. Note: Don't worry too much about cookies, just delete them regularly.

My desktop is running a Linux distro like gadget_lover, so I'm not concerned about spyware on it. However, my wife runs Windows 98 on her laptop and I do make sure it has adequate protection.

Since we are on DSL behind a NAT firewall I don't run a local software firewall on my machines. I have in the past and have never had anything getting to my machines. But one would be useful for making sure there was no malicious outgoing traffic, but I am not overly concerned about that either.I have not fiddled with software firewalls lately so I can't give you my opinion on them. Though Zone Alarm gets mentioned often.

For anti-virus on my wife's W98 machine I use AVG Free Edition. It is well regarded and does a nice job without all the unnecessary overhead.

For spyware I use Spybot Search & Destroy. It is also free and does a very nice job.

I do not recommend running several different anti-virus programs or several different spyware detectors or several different firewalls all at the same time. "More" in all probability will not provide you more protection, in this case "more" could just cause you more problems. Though you could have more than one anti-virus program on your computer...just don't have them both run at startup. Use one for startup and real time protection, and one that you scan files manually for a second opinion so to speak .... just don't have them both run at startup.

Depending on what operating system you are running, you will want to research which security settings you should look at and how to properly configure those security settings.

About Internet "clean-up" programs ...... don't waste your money on them (just my opinion). You can do all that easily, quickly and manually. Just delete your temporary Internet files, delete all of your cookies, clear your history cache. That's pretty much what they do anyhow.

If a product has to spam you, use pop-ups, scare you or use hard sell tactics to get you to purchase their "security" software, "buyer beware" is the phrase that comes to mind.

All of this is just my opinion. There are others, some good, some not so good. This is just what has worked for me. I believe in keeping things simple, educated ..... but simple.

Do you really need all of that? Do you have a hardware router between you & the Internet?

A $30 router can save you from quite a lot. Get one if you don't have one already. Most come pretty well configured with their default settings to be invisible to the Internet's unscrupulous activities. You can check by using the ShieldsUp! test here.

I have zero trouble with spyware, have no popups, etc. But then again, I never use Outlook and rarely use IE. Using those is like swimming in the ocean with a bucket of stinky chum. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

this is a very newbie question, but how do you install and configure a hardware router?

is it simple to do? any caveats?
(maybe a link to an article or something)

i almost chose to install one, but became busy and forgot about it.

Bob

[ QUOTE ]
pedalinbob said:
this is a very newbie question, but how do you install and configure a hardware router?

is it simple to do? any caveats?
(maybe a link to an article or something)

i almost chose to install one, but became busy and forgot about it.

Bob

[/ QUOTE ]

There are hardware firewalls and software firewalls. Hardware firewalls are a separate piece of equipment that gets plugged in between your computer or home network and your Internet connection. There is nothing that would be installed on your computer. You would have to read the documentation that comes with it for how to plug it in and configure it.

A software firewall is like the name implies, a program that you install and run locally on your computer like any other program you might have. One example is Zone Alarm, it has a "learning" feature. Once installed, as you start to use your web browser, e-mail program, basically anything that requires Internet access ...... Zone Alarm will pop up and ask you if you want that particular program to have access to the Internet. You can also manually configure most software firewalls, but the learning feature is an easier way to go until you have time to really research and understand what you are doing.

Though a hardware firewall is really the far superior of the two, most folks can get by with a simple software firewall.

Be advised, by using a firewall of any kind you can create situations where you will possibly have to troubleshoot your Internet connection. So, if all of a sudden your e-mail isn't working correctly.....you would need to check your basic Internet connection settings, your e-mail configuration settings, your firewall (hardware or software) configuration settings. If you ever need to call your ISP's technical support for assistance, they may or may not help you with anything outside the basic computer and e-mail settings. And please, TELL the tech support people if you are running a firewall of any kind so that they know.

In other words, you will NEED to read all the documentation for your hardware or software firewall or you could cause problems for yourself.

Again, my opinion.

I usually search for the program in one or more of the 'known spyware' lists or databases before I dowmload and install, but I seriously question whether that method is reliable in the long run. I also scan the EULA for piggyback installs before I click OK. That catches many of them before installation.

I think that a safer approach is to only DL freeware from the Pricelessware site.

[ QUOTE ]
From the site:
The Pricelessware list is a compilation of software collected through a yearly vote by the participants of the "alt.comp.freeware" newsgroup. It is a list of what people have voted as "the best of the best in Freeware".

[/ QUOTE ]

Those people hate spyware, crippleware, adware and all forms of malware. It is also a great newsgroup to ask for advice on where to find a program for a specific purpose. Check out the Pricelessware site first whenever you need freeware. They have a huge selection sorted into well organized catagories.

This problem doesn't exist on my FreeBSD box where I spend very nearly all of my time, but I'm much more careful in win32. I also do all of my surfing through a proxy that filters out malicious code for most popular operating systems.

_mike_ is right that for some ISP's you need to configure the hardware router, and it may affect the behavior of some software on your computer, especially if you doing something fancy like VPN to your office. However just to give you the sunny side scenario it can be as simple as the following (which it was for my setup)

- Unpack the router from the box & plug in its power.
- Disconnect the power from the cable modem
- connect the Ethernet wiring so it goes from cable modem to router (on the port labelled "WAN") to your computer (from a port on the router labelled "LAN").
- Reconnect the power on your cable modem and wait for the status lights to settle down.

Oh, and you might need to reboot your PC to have it get a new Ethernet address. (Easiest way for newbies rather than sending you to command-line hell doing ipconfig or getting into the specifics of each OS version)

That's was it for me. I have Comcast. When they were MediaOne they used to make me go through a big hassle of giving them the new hardware address of any new box I connected to the cable modem. Now it appears that they don't, so I can just plug in what I want and their server will okay it without prior approval. Very nice. 'course it ain't cheap but at least it's nice.

For DSL you'll probably have to read the directions and enter something into the router such as a username & password in the "PPPoE" config window. But still, on a good day it doesn't get much more complicated than that.

Good luck!

The solution to IE-only websites is to use an alternate browser as a default, and then use IE only for those sites that require it. Firefox even has an optional extension that allows you to right-click on a web page in Firefox, and then launch that same page in IE (without manually starting IE, copying and pasting the URL, etc.).

If you continue to use IE only, the Google toolbar goes a long way in reducing spyware/malware just by blocking popups. A lot of automatic spyware installations are launched via popup windows.

I heard there is a group of mozilla people that will contact the website that doesn't render properly in their browsers and help them to support them. They have gotten many websites to support mozilla browsers possibly mostly because mozilla supports the standards and the messed up IE only sites don't.

Update, I bought Webroot Spy Sweeper version 3.0. It took me to the website where I got version 3.2. After downloading the updates it found 7 spywares and 31 traces. Traces are pieces of spyware programs all chopped up so they'll be harder to find.

After clearing everything, I found my "Hijack This". It runs fine now and found even more junk.

I went back to PestPatrol to get the free scan again. The first time I went there, before I installed Spy Sweeper, the scan took less than 1 hour, maybe 1/2 hour or 40 minutes. Now at PestPatrol I have run the scan twice. It never finished. I waited for over 2 hours. It appeared to be still scanning. I had to turn it off so I could do other things.

Bottom line on this:

Spy Sweeper found junk nothing else did, but then again everything does. It let me run Hijack This. I don't know yet if it fixed everything that PestPatrol found.

This is my 1st time running Hijack This. It found a lot of things in the "other" catagory. One thing I don't understand/like is that I cleared all the boxes so I could check them one at a time. I checked 1 box, read more info about it, then deleted it. Well I went back to fix some more junk and it had fixed ALL the stuff in the "other" catagory. I don't like that.

Will it do that for catagory R, F, or N?
What if I want to fix 1 thing will it "fix" and make everything in that catagory disappear?

Mr. shift, thanks for bringing up the other thread. I just read that again.

Be careful what you fix with hijackthis... you can mess things up if you don't know what you're doing.

Use Firefox. Its free, its very good. Its very customizable.
Firefox = No spyware etc.

Firefox != No Spyware /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

If javascript and java is turned on in FireFox... you WILL get spyware or trojans. It is inevitable if you are visiting questionable sites like porn or warez sites.

[ QUOTE ]
Negeltu said:
If javascript and java is turned on in FireFox... you WILL get spyware or trojans. It is inevitable if you are visiting questionable sites like porn or warez sites.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been using Firefox for months and I have both of those options turned on. I still haven't gotten a spyware program installed through Firefox--not one.

TheBeam...check your pm box

It depends on what sites you visit asdalton. I've been using firefox and the whole mozilla suite for a few years. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Trust me.. you visit questionable sites... you WILL get spyware and trojans. Firefox and mozilla are still my fav browsers.