OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

I have no more patience to fight those dataminers (Gator, Claria, Sydoor [sp?] and others) any more. Whatever i do, they get themselves installed on my PC. I remove them with Ad-aware, but it helps permanently only- for a couple of days.
What i am interested in- does anybody know a way to get rid of them once and for ever? How do you deal with them? Let them live in your PC or maybe you have some kind of super-duper utility installed that prohibits all Gator-like activities? Please share your experience. Any input about fighting dataminers is the most welcome.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

I have never gotten any of them.

I usually surf with Firefox, the newest implematation of Firebird, which was a stripped down Version of Mozilla, which (IIRC) was written by the people who wrote Netscape before AOL made it a mess of bloat code.

Recently, I used IE to check on someone's website here, and continued to surf a bit elsewhere. Sheesh, I was getting tons of port probes, just from using IE. That all went away when I switched back to Firefox.

By the way, I never use P2P networks, and my email is all web-based.

Best of luck.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

I use SpyBot-S&D Here, I think.

It might help out.

Also, here are some specific instructions for removal as found at SARC.

Good luck!

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

install a firewall, like zonealarm, then you can at least stop them from using your internet connection.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

Dont use Internet Explorer. There are tons of better and safer alternatives.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

But if you don't use IE you can't see my fiction website!! (Due to my crappy javascript)

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, at least one Javascript link on your story page worked in Firefox. I only turn on Javascript when I see a webpage needs it, anyways.

Oh, have you noticed yet, I'm a little paranoid about web interfaces. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ April 10, 2004, 17:19: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

I definitely agree that Internet Exploder is not something anyone should be using anymore. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Besides Mozilla/Firefox, and its commercialized Version Netscape 7.x, there is also Opera and there are several lesser known browsers becoming more popular. ALL of them are more secure than IE. Even the "MyIE" front end replacement is more secure in some ways, though it still uses the Windows HTML DLLs and so has most of the vulnerabilities of IE. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif

A firewall is not a bad idea but won't help against Gator and other 'spyware' that loads through web pages. Switching from IE is the best strategy to kill this sort of spyware because only IE supports 'ActiveX' in web pages which is remote execution built into your browser. Yep, IE has insecurity designed in as a feature, not a bug.

Additionally, for real privacy I recommend a 'web filter' that can intercept nasty HTML and Javascript code before your browser even sees it. While Mozilla has internal settings that give you a lot more control over what web pages can do (like an option to simply turn off popups) there is just nothing like being able to write your own scripts to kill advertising banners, neutralize snooping javascript, and alter the appearance of the page if you want.

Get Proxomitron and take control of the web! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

www.proxomitron.info

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

Well Baron, there are those of us do not know how to script and don't want to know; what then?

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

It comes with a pretty good set of default filters, and you can get 'customized' sets of filters on the Yahoo group dedicated to Proxomitron. (That's "prox-list" @ Groups.yahoo.com) They have a special set just for Yahoo Groups, for example, that wipes out the advertising and re-arranges the page. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif The people on this list are on top of the trends in 'counter measures' and will quickly post new filters if new types of ads show up that get around the normal filters.

[ April 10, 2004, 21:09: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

Proxomitron comes with scripts that kill 99.9% of ads and other nasty web stuff.

For some reason, Proxomitron randomly stopped working on my PC one day... and I thought it was a dead project. Hopefully it will start working again for me with the new Version. Then I won't have to see the ad banners on Shrapnel any more. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ April 10, 2004, 21:08: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yeah, spybot is what I've used most effectively. Gives you an option to immunize your PC. Love that program.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

New Version? The Last Proxomitron was released in June of 2003. There won't be any more. You can read the story of why that is on the same Yahoo group where you go for help. They have a record of the Messages where the author finally loses patience with some of the whiners and throws in the towel. As good as Proxomitron currently is, though, it will still be useful for years. Before things change too much (new releases of Windows) maybe someone can get the source code from him if he won't resume work on it himself and make an 'open source' project out of it.

[ April 11, 2004, 00:30: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

The first thing is figure out what site your visiting that keeps loading gator on your system, then stay away.
I use both ad-aware & Spybot & have them set up as scheduled tasks
Asuming default locations,For Ad-aware use this syntax:
C:\PROGRA~1\Lavasoft\AD-AWA~1\Ad-aware.exe "c:" +A +S +1
For Spybot:
C:\PROGRA~1\SPYBOT~1.1\SpybotSD.exe /autocheck /autofix /autoclose

This will auto clean your system. I set them to run once a day at staggered times, what one misses, the other gets.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

Thanks all for your responces.

I guess I'll try changing my browser to Opera firstly. And see if that helps or not.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

OK, I'm going to add one thing. On the website Fark.com, there is a recent discussion on a news story about avoiding spyware.

I've found Fark discussions on computer topics are suprisingly good. Most /. discussions rapidly turn to "use Linix, no problems", which doesn't really help me.

So here's the link, but ... be careful about going here. Usually Fark satirizes news storys and such, but links that say NSFW mean "not safe for work", and that means nudity. Even the ads on the borders are well populated with very healthy women who seem to have problems finding t-shirts that fit well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

With that caveat, {clicky}

[ April 12, 2004, 17:58: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

If you must use Internet Explorer here is something that you can do to limit the amount of spy ware you get from pages:

Go to Tools: internet options. Select the privacy tab. Click the advanced button. Click the override automatic cookie handling. And select prompt for first and third party cookies.

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/...loroptions.jpg

When you visit a page you will get a notification about every cookie that tries to access you machine. You can block, accept, black all, or accept all. It may seem a little annoying at first but as you start blocking all the number of cookie notices that you will receive will drop dramatically. More importantly by blocking them you will prevent spyware from gaining access to your PC. After I started doing this when I would scan my system with Ad-aware I only find 1 or two compared to the 20 I used to find.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Limit, but not stop. There really is no reason to use IE instead of any other non-spyware supporting browser. IE actively supports this behaviour, and with a lot of effort you can stop some of its abuse. Every other browser just is not programmed to support spying. It is not a glitch, bug or something that a new patch for IE will fix. It is done on purpose, and if you use IE you accept and submit to this policy.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

I use a application called "Cookie Wall". It allows you to sort created cookies into Groups to keep and Groups to kill. Find it Here . I use it in combo with SpyBot, and have not had many problems. Of course my web ranging is limited and I try to keep away from sites that might have these sorts of cookies.

SpyBot cleans them, and C-Wall keeps them out.

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

Disabling Active-X scripts from being able to run solves a lot of problems...

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

Make sure you have ad-watch running if you can afford it

And if not, Im sure there are plenty of free alternatives about

Also, if a pop-up asking you to install something appears ALWAYS PRESS NO/CANEL

Thats the only way Ive ever know Gator to get installed

Also, use emule if you must use P2P, its spy/ad ware free

Goto www.download.com and look around for things that will help with security

As for a firewall, havent used one for a long time, I find them too much hassle and no firewall is as good as people make out as they just provide a challenge to hackers, and hackers will accept all challenges

Every since I stopped using firewalls I havent been hacked once and my net speed as been noticablly faster and more stable

But thats just me

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, one reason: My website!
Seriously, and OT- Does anyone have any good resources for making javascript compatible with non-ie browsers? I can't do it on my own!

[ April 13, 2004, 11:37: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

Dogscoff:

You can get lots of help with Mozilla Online. Check out their own site. They have a page pointing to help: http://www.mozilla.org/support/

Apparently the 'Unofficial Mozilla Help Page' is very popular because it's the first thing listed on the official page! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

http://mozilla.gunnars.net/

Then there is usenet. There are many Groups under netscape.public.mozilla.* but netscape.public.mozilla.java is probably your best bet. Javascript is a subset of Java after all. Or you could go to netscape.public.mozilla.general and ask which group would be best to ask about this issue in. There is also comp.lang.javascript in the regular computer language series. People there will probably know about the differences between Mozilla based browsers and IE.

Finally, they even have an IRC help channel! Geez, these guys are thorough. Join channel #mozillazine on the server irc.mozilla.org and ask around.

P2P Software:

I haven't used eMule but I recommend WinMX to anyone who wants to get access to P2P stuff. Get it free at www.winmx.com -- no ads, no spyware, and it's very small. A few hundred kbytes. It's very stable. At least when you aren't acting as a host for a chat room or serving thousands of files on a broadband connection. It also seems to be very safe. I've never heard of any of these 'viruses' for P2P networks traveling on the WinMX system.

I used "Kazaa Lite" for a while and was really put-out by the clunky design, not to mention it's instability. WinMX is much better for both stability and user interface. And there is quite a bit of good music on the WinMX system. Maybe not as much software as on Kazaa or eMule, though.

And Last but not least, WinMX is still 'under the radar' of the anti-P2P forces. I've never heard of anyone on WinMX being tracked down and sued by the RIAA or anyone else yet. That's probably because WinMX/Frontcode does not operate any servers. Not even 'contact' systems giving addresses for other servers. WinMX is a totally distributed system.

If you want to go into 'paranoid' mode though, there is always Freenet, a true encrypted and secure system. http://www.freenetproject.org/

[ April 13, 2004, 20:20: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: OT: Any way to forget Gator?
 

I guess our days of pretending to be a forum of law-abiding citizens are over.