Re: [SWCollect] Spyware

[BL]

Spyware is really common now in days - if you've had an active PC for a while, then suddenly decide to run these programs, yes, you are absolutely going to find a lot of stuff, from tracking cookies and dialers to memory resident programs & hijacks you didnt even know were starting at boot-up.  I know first hand, since I'm the computer-savy one of the family, I've seen some seriously messed up computers, and it's gotten about 10 times as bad in the past 2 or 3 years.  Ad-aware is the best thing you can do for it, combined with educating yourself on a few tecniques for removal.  I run Ad-aware once a week after doing the online update to the definitions file and I find anywhere from 25-50 new malicious components -- for the most part, just cookies from blacklisted hosts.  That combined with checking my task manager's running processes every so often to make sure there's nothing i don't recognize running.  Prevention is the best defense as always, and the best tips I can give are: Enable preview for attachments in Outlook Express, and never Open them, save them to disk.  When surfing websites, never click a windows pop-up box that gives you an Ok / Cancel choice or something like that -- malicious coders often spoof an approval to install something on your computer with such misleading dialogs.  When those pop-up, use ALT-F4 to close it, without choosing either.  And of course, make sure you are up to date with all the Windows XP / Explorer / Outlook security patches from Microsoft.com. ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 8:22 AM Subject: [SWCollect] Spyware I had a LOT of spyware on my computer as I've been using same drive/programs for a long time (like close to 100 spybots). If you'd like to check these sites are free (scan and REMOVE, many ask you to pay to remove). If anyone runs I'd be interested in hearing results (see if anyone has more than I did). I run both as spyware items are hard coded it seems, one might find some the other misses. http://www.safer-networking.org/ http://www.lavasoftusacom/ Tom Visit my web page for many games for sale/trade and screen shots of Ultima Escape from Mt. Drash,  Tom's Ultima, Infocom and RPG page