OT: Any way to forget Gator?

Baron Munchausen · #1 April 10th, 2004, 07:01 PM

I definitely agree that Internet Exploder is not something anyone should be using anymore.

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.

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!

www.proxomitron.info

pathfinder · #2 April 10th, 2004, 07:08 PM

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

Baron Munchausen · #3 April 10th, 2004, 10:00 PM

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.

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 ]

Fyron · #4 April 10th, 2004, 10:03 PM

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.

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

bearclaw · #5 April 10th, 2004, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Slynky:
I use SpyBot-S&D Here, I think.

yeah, spybot is what I've used most effectively. Gives you an option to immunize your PC. Love that program.

Baron Munchausen · #6 April 11th, 2004, 01:29 AM

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 ]

Electrum · #7 April 11th, 2004, 04:10 AM

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.