adikgede Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 re: WMD Lets not get off track here. Actually I don't mind a tangent, because Blackie got his answer, but the leap from Warez to Wars is a bit too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddha Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 sorry...no disrespect intended to the board or the original poster. I'm at a friends house right now cleaning out his PC. I did a simple search at google.com for annoying software and how to prevent it. The search is here Blackie. Paste that into your address bar and you will be able to find enough info to clean out and prevent this menace in the future: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=preventing+unwanted+software+installationI found the following site This link was especially helpful. It steps you through the entire deal: http://www.iocc.com/help/annoy.html they call it spyware. hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 buddha said:sorry...no disrespect intended to the board or the original poster. No problem just trying to keep thing on track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamui Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 Hi buddha, usually you'll need three programs to feel safe: an antivirus software which updates automatically, Spybot and Ad-Aware. If you run these programs frequently you won't have many problems with spyware, trojans or dialer. Except there are some cases of "browser hijacking" which cannot be repaired through this programs, but using an alternative browser like Opera or Mozilla will reduce this problem significantly. I forgot a fourth program: A firewall like the commercial Norton or Mcafee firewalls or freeware like Zone Alarm or Outpost. This will secure computers against the usual threats BUT will not shield your computer if a professional hacker want's to hack your computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 21, 2004 Report Share Posted February 21, 2004 Thank you, I finally got rid of Gator, thanks to the instructions from iocc. I've bin using Webroot Spy Sweeper, and Gator was the only prog it couldn't handle. :: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 21, 2004 Report Share Posted February 21, 2004 totally agree with kamui on this one, those two proggys will keep most nasties at bay, i run those two along with my AV program (AVG) and firewall and have been clean for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loner w/a boner Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 Blackie: The idea that anti-virus software, and spyware will keep the "nasties" away is not entirely accurate and is NOT a sound guideline for computer users! First, For anti-virus software to detect a virus/trojan, it, or a program with similar code has to be in the anti-virus software's virus definition file. That takes time--it doesn't matter how often the software vendor puts out updates--it's always playing catchup. If you download malicious code, and and it's not yet in your virus scanner's virus definition file, you may suffer the consequences. Also, there are many many trojans and worms that go undetected for many months before being foundout. They can eat up bandwidth, destroy files, etc. The best advice is to first, backup any data you don't want to lose (hopefully there's no infection on your back-ups), and make a boot-up disk. Secondly, avoid downloading files from untrusted sources (Warez is notorious for trojans), even opening e-mail attachments from people you know is risky. Before opening, e-mail them back asking if they sent you such a file. Thirdly, use an anti-virus scanner (frequent updates, as mentioned), a spyware remover, such as Ad-Aware, and a firewall. All these have to be properly configured, of course. Unless a computer user is downloading files from untrusted sources, he usually doesn't have too much to worry about. BUT--there's a hack for pretty much everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soongmak Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 Sometimes I think anti virus software and fire wall are causing more problems than solving them. About 90 % of the events in my logbook have to do with the true vector monitor service (comes with zonealarm) and this service causes 100 % of my sudden reboots. When I uninstalled my latest antivirus software (AVG from Grisoft) it made the taskbar dissapear as well. I could do nothing but reinstall windows. In the last two years, not one virusscan, either by AVG, Mcafee and Avast, turned up a virus on my system. I am seriously considering giving this software a miss. Just to see what happens. Cheers, soongmak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 Thanks to all who replied, I've installed ad-aware. Let's see how it performs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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