Terminating Spyware With Extreme Prejudice~"It's like a baptism for your computer," Mr. Wagner said

The New York Times ^ | December 30, 2004 | RACHEL DODES

[zeugma]

I thionk your comment to me was misdirected. I didn't comment about Norton AV. I haven't used it in years so have no opinion of it. No need for AV software if you run Linux and keep current.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just got my copy of WIRED magazine and .....inside :

Hot Properties
Stacks of equipment, piles of remotes, a rat's nest of Ethernet cables - the wired life can get ugly. But a new school of home design is finding creative ways to combine tech and aesthetics. These four houses show how geek palaces can be elegant, comfortable, and tasteful. [ Coming January 3 ]
By Jessie Scanlon

[DaiHuy]

I added WebRoot Spy Sweeper to my computer, haven't had a piece of spyware in about months. Don't get annoying popups either. Best investment I ever made.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Drool....drool...you need to see the Jan issue of Wired....but check it out before you share with your wife....the good stuff starts on page 103.....

[general_re]

Stacks of equipment, piles of remotes, a rat's nest of Ethernet cables - the wired life can get ugly.

Hey, how'd that guy get in to my house? ;)

It's not as bad as it used to be - I spent a weekend last year with a fish tape and ran all the cable inside the walls, putting jacks in each room. Before than it was kind of haphazard - some inside the walls, some on the baseboards, etc. Of course, you still need cable from the jack to the box, which is what I'm hoping to get rid of with the wireless network...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The latest alarm bell:

Windows XP users Phelled by new Trojan [Symantec bulletin, SP2 no protection, will see 2 IE popups]

[stylin_geek]

I went down that route with a desktop we have here at work, and finally gave up. Somebody had loaded all kinds of freeware software on it, and there was no getting rid of the spy ware.

It was far easier and less time consuming to reload. I also told the person to bad if he lost stuff he wanted. I was pretty irritated by then. A few hours later, the computer had only business related apps on it. And, it is running like a brand new machine.

Before you ask, this stuff was on my network before I started. You have no idea what a fight it was to get everything cleaned up. For God's sake, some bonehead actually allowed some users to put AOL on their desktop computers!! Of course, even though AOL has been removed, those computers are still giving me trouble. However, they're in for a complete format reload, too.

[general_re]

IE bug? No worries for me - we're a FF house ;)

[Born Conservative]

Bump for later

[1L]

>>You have no idea what a fight it was to get everything cleaned up.<<

Actually, I do. I spent almost the entire day Thanksgiving re-doing my Dad's POS Dell computer and doing much of what I recommended above to my Mom's. My Dad's has a more serious problem that I haven't as of yet identified, but my Mom's runs like a top after I installed everything I recommended and showed her how to update and run things. I doubt she's even ran them or updated them, but as of now, she hasn't had any problems.

Don't underestimate the utility of the programs I recommended. I believe if they won't cure the problems, you may very well have more serious issues.

[JoJo Gunn]

...."a huge production with potentially cataclysmic results."

It's hard enough trying to help along those who are a couple of paces behind without this kind of crap.

Drama Queens should not write for the MassMind.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[dennisw]

sorry!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well, it is the NY Times....

[dennisw]

Thanks for your homepage anti spyware advice. Great one stop guide.

[JoJo Gunn]

Yeah, it's some of their "karmic retribution", ain't it?

Happy New Year!

[Right Angler]

bump

[rwfromkansas]

I mostly use ARes....bittorrent seems really slow and a lot of the good sites like suprnova have been pulled offline.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Happy new year back at you.....

Shutting down here for a bit...got to get out into the sunchine before the next storm hits....

[rwfromkansas]

Is Avast that good? Maybe I should switch to that from Norton.

I do use Spybot and Adaware...they work great. I also use Firefox, and it works find 90 percent of the time for a site.

I have not tried CleanCache though....will have to do that.