OT: Spyware

dogscoff · #1 June 29th, 2004, 02:22 PM

I had one of these hit me today, despite running adaware and anti virus.

Turned out a vbs script had gotten itself into my startmenu>startup folder. No idea how, but I deleted it easily enough. I also had to kill a process called "SCRIPT" or something and I seem to be fine now, without even rebooting.

I've also noticed that my google browser bar is starting to let some popups through- it seems the spammers have taken the lead in the permanent struggle between popups and blockers. No update from google to counter it yet=-(

Raging Deadstar · #2 June 29th, 2004, 02:48 PM

I recommend Spybot Search and Destroy, it picks up a lot of junk that Adaware won't.

http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=home

Abdiel · #3 June 29th, 2004, 02:53 PM

Sometimes it's because something installed a toolbar in your IE that's letting the idiot things through.

If that's the case, go to
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k/toolbarcop.htm

Be careful of what you remove, and you should be fine. But do be sure you're not removing anything essential. When in doubt, ask

Abd.

Ragnarok · #4 June 29th, 2004, 02:57 PM

I have Spyboy S&D I just hadn't run it yet. I guess I had forgot about it. But thanks for the tip RD.

I went through and found a whole slew of folders in Program Files that were junk and then I went through add and remove programs and there were a ton of stuff dealing with babes in bikinis and so forth that the user had not installed. I removed those and some of the search bars that were in IE are now gone. Hopefull that solves the problem or at least makes it more tolerable.

Abdiel - I will run that program to see what else I may have missed and see if that does the trick.

Thanks for the help and suggestions!

Raging Deadstar · #5 June 29th, 2004, 03:02 PM

My sister had this problem a few days ago with popups that weren't related to IE. It took me 5 hours of constant scanning with Adaware And Spybot S&D plus scanning with a AVG 6.0 to get rid of the dam things.

I'm pretty sure you've checked for Viruses, we had some Trojans on that computer that might have had something to do with it. Either way it's fixed now.

Good Luck sorting it out

Slynky · #6 June 29th, 2004, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Raging Deadstar:
I recommend Spybot Search and Destroy, it picks up a lot of junk that Adaware won't.

http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=home

I have to agree.

Gandalf Parker · #7 June 29th, 2004, 03:19 PM

Some are alittle harder to remove. Even spyware and adaware can fall short. They require a seperate program to search and destroy them.

By any chance, if the person googles a search... does the first 4 or 5 results try to force them to search again at a site called 2020?