[Vision2020] Washington Post: Beware: Spyware

Mon, 03 May 2004 14:19:12 -0700

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Just to throw in my two cents, 
Ad-Aware is primarily designed to scan for Ad-based programs; the kind of
stuff that shows up when you use various Peer-to-Peer filesharing
programs, or download anything from the Gator corporation. 
Spybot Search &amp; Destroy looks for Browser Hijack Objects, Keyloggers,
porn dialers and numerous other creepy bits of junk that can creep into
your system through various webpages or Trojan horse programs. Usually,
the more malevolent the program, the better Spybot is at removing
it. 
One's frequency of scanning is probably best determined by two
things:&nbsp; level of paranoia and when clues exist that something might
be wrong with your system. If you absolutely must remove every little
cookie from your system, then run Ad-Aware regularly. Or, go into the
Internet Options Control Panel icon and set your cookie level to High or
&quot;Block All Cookies&quot;. This will take care of the main source of
hits in Ad-Aware, though it will impact your ability to view many
websites. Also, you can forget about doing any online shopping if you
have your cookies turned off. 
Here's a nice definition for cookies:&nbsp;
<a href="http://www.idcide.com/pages/res_term.htm#cookies" eudora="autourl">http://www.idcide.com/pages/res_term.htm#cookies</a> 
If you are experiencing popup ads when you first turn your computer on,
or when you're not connected to the Internet, that's a warning sign that
something is lurking on your system. Time to run both scanners. If your
computer tries to dial out to the Internet for no discernible reason (you
don't have automatic email downloads on, for instance) then Spybot is
warranted. 
Otherwise, perhaps once a month would be prudent. Before running any of
these scanners, be sure to run their online update tools so they download
the latest updated definitions. This will allow them to scan and find
more junk than before. 
--- 
David Camden-Britton -=)*(=-&nbsp; davidcb@acm.org 
At 10:06 AM 4/30/2004 -0700, you wrote: 
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Wayne, 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Interesting article. 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm positive that anyone who goes on the web regularly
has many of these &quot;bugs&quot; on their computer--so it's a good idea
to have a scanning/quarantining program if you want to get rid of them.
 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I know you've got quite a bit of expertise in this
area, so I've got a question for you. 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What do you think of the freeware/shareware versions
of &quot;AdAware&quot; and/or &quot;Spybot Search &amp;
Destroy&quot;&nbsp; programs? 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I've run both of them and they both find
&quot;data-mining&quot; bugs---but they seem to find different types of
these spys. 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Do you know what the difference is? Is it better to
regularly(I've seen once a week recommended) run both of these or is
there a better program that could be run once and pretty much get rid of
everything? 
&nbsp;&nbsp; Thanks for any help, TL 
 
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