Posted on 03/02/2008 7:15:35 PM PST by no nau
My computer is infested with this crap and I can't get rid of it. None of the free services can solve the problem, and I might even pay for such a service, except that all of them seem to be just folks willingly to take advantage of you and charge you more money, and possibly infect you more. Has anyone here seen this? How should I and anyone else deal with this?
Go to Kim Komando’s site Komando.com
She has downloads for excellent free firewalls, AV software and ADware/spyware removers.
I use AVG Anti virus, Zone Alarm Firewall, Spybot and Lavasoft Adaware to remove crsp.
CCleaner is good too.
All the stuff on Kim’s site is free and is well proven.
AVG free is a good one, recommended by the firm that has repaired my computers. Google AVG
Norton by Symantec works for me. No spyware, no adware, no viruses for about 3 years. Occassional tracking cookies get in, but are easily identified and removed with Norton.
“Stop Sign IS spyware.”
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LOL.
(grabs popcorn, kicks feet up in anticipation...)
Lots of good tech threads today. :)
The short answer is “stop opening the crap”.
You are inviting it in. Never open an attachment that you are not absolutely certain as to what it is. That means no cute crap that your relatives and friends send you. Never open it... period. Eventually they will quite sending it (usually because their computers have been killed by all of their crap).
Install Zone Alarm Free (or similar firewall) and Grisoft Free AVG (or other antivirus). Semi periodically run one or two freeware adware programs like Ad Aware and SpyBot.
But back to the short answer. If you don’t want crap on your computer, don’t invite it in. There ya go.
Google your exact problems/”symptoms”. Recently in the e-Ther there have been a few pesky buggers that progs like AdAware, Search & Destroy and even AVG have not been able to beat. You might need either SmitRem or SmitFraud — both of those are free & googlable too.
Scan with Spybot (freeware) also make sure your antivirus is up to date - many spyware/adware are bots or trojans, some contain viruses. Some are difficult to clear. I am a system admin - recently worked on a box with 5 trojans and 1 viruses - could not clear them - multiple imbedded - user didn’t keep it up to date - ended up having to back up all data and wipe it clean.
Spybot S&D. Get it from the source: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Format the hard drive and do a clean install.
Download avast!
It’s free for use by individuals. It works great. Doesn’t slow up my computer. Automatically updated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avast!
bookmark
Are you using Firefox? If you are, and you also have Internet Explorer installed, there is a really common, and really insidious, virus that’ll constantly spam you with ad pages. I never could fully get rid of it, so I uninstalled Firefox (getting rid of Internet Explorer is almost impossible), and now am using a pretty good little browser called K-Meleon. I haven’t checked to see if Firefox or IE has solved the problem lately, though.
bump
LMAO! What a great thread.
I used to have McAfee on this computer which is 6 years old. It was always running slow and freezing up. I tried Bit Defender about 6 months ago and it found 25 virus’s that either McAfee put on my hard drive or they failed to find. I cancelled and deleted everything that related to McAfee and started using the free Bit Defender and Ad-Aware about twice a week and my old clunker runs like a new one. The free virus scans are best in my opinion plus I am saving that 49.95 per year that I was giving McAfee for absolutley nothing.
To make your internet surfing less cluttered, try using Mozilla Firefox as your browser, then downloading an add-on/extension of that program called Adblock Plus. It won’t completely eliminate the ads, but you’ll notice the difference.
I’ve tried Trend Micro’s Internet Security program before, too. It worked fairly well several years ago, but I don’t know about the current version.
There are trojans like Puper and some others that hide in your hard drive, and go out to bring in popups, more downloaders, and the like.
See if you can find out if you have trojans or the like. I recently had an infection with a downloader called Vundo and I had to get a special tool (it was shareware) that I ran probably four times to kill the beastie.
Spybot did not see Vundo, but McAfee did. McAfee could not fix it, but it alerted that it was there.
The really clever ones will disable your spyware before downloading lots of stuff.
For Anti-virus use AVG Anti Virus
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/
I’m really liking windows defender
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Then there’s Ad-Aware.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php
And Spy bot Search and destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html
And if you want to pay for it check out http://www.sunbelt-software.com/
Finally, if you are running Norton Anti-Virus - uninstall it.
If that doesn’t clean everything out, there are some other tricks you can use. Check out cnet.com, they have a pretty good guides.
How old is your computer and what Operating system are you using?
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