Pop-ups, Spyware, Virus and more

John Gretzinger · Post by **John Gretzinger** » 15 Apr 2004 10:27 am

I continually see these things on the forum and in my daily work (I'm a computer consultant working with small and home based businesses). Since I first got involved with the Anti-virus community in 1985, a lot has changed. But here is where I am with my clients today.

Every system I work on that uses IE as their web browser will get the Google Toolbar installed. If you are on IE6 (and if not, why not?), then Google will stop well over 90% of web browser pop-ups (I won't go into the technical details of why this works - it just does). This is a free piece of software and works as well or better than any of the commercial products.

Ad-Aware is free and will detect and remove spyware. It's simple to use and can be found from many download sites as well as from the vendor . They also have a commercial product that stops, or at least gives you the option to stop the installation of spyware at the point when it is going to install on your system.

Price to get rid of spyware and stop pop-ups = $0.00

Anti-virus products. Here is where it gets interesting. Everyone has their favorite and I've used just about everything on the market at one point or another.

My favorite is pc-Cillin (now pc-Cillin Internet Security) from Trend Micro. This product just works. Trend has something like 65-70% of the corportate server market, and even in corporations where an alternate is used at the desktop, Trend is used for the servers. The latest versions also include a firewall. Price $49.95. But if you run their on line scanning tool (highly recommended) and take the quiz you get a quick 20% off the price. Annual updates are $9 I think and unlike some of the other products, if you forget to renew they do not stop you from continuing to be updates.

None of my clients who use pc-Cillin and follow my recommendations for Safe Comupting have gotten infected.

The other products I like are out of Finland and Russia.

I prefer a stand alone firewall product, especially if you have DSL or Cable. The easest to use and configure is Zone Alarm. There is a bit of learning as to what to allow and not allow, but once it's set up, it just does its job and keeps you safe. Oh yes, the free version does all you need.

Total cost so far $49.95

Cost for one visit from your friendly computer consultant to fix these problems after the fact - $150.

A couple of other quick tips - programs like Kazoo and anything from Gator.com put advertisements on your computer in addition to downloading them or providing pop-up windows using a technique that is not stopped by Google (since the ads reside on your computer and are not activated by your web browser). Shooting yourself in the foot is always painful. If you run these programs, you will get pop-ups.

If you run AOL, you get pop-ups but they mostly come from AOL. One of the benefits of using AOL.

If you have specific, non general questions drop me a note and I'll be glad to answer them.

Just my observations and comments from doing this for almost 20 years.

jdg

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MSA D-10 w/Nashville 400
'63 Gibson Hummingbird
16/15c Hammered Dulcimer

richard burton · Post by **richard burton** » 15 Apr 2004 10:34 am

John, something got at my computer a few months ago, and now I can't get Google. Is there a way to get Google back?
Thanks, R B

John Gretzinger · Post by **John Gretzinger** » 15 Apr 2004 1:27 pm

Richard -

Not sure by what you mean by can't get Google back. If you mean the toolbar is not showing, try this.

Start|Settings|Control Panel|Add/Remove Programs

Remove the Google toolbar, reboot the system and then download it again.

If that still does not work, try re-installing IE6 SP1 and then reload the Google toolbar.

If that is not your question, give me a bit more detail and we can look at other options.

jdg

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MSA D-10 w/Nashville 400
'63 Gibson Hummingbird
16/15c Hammered Dulcimer

Jody Carver · Post by **Jody Carver** » 16 Apr 2004 4:50 pm

Hi John
How ya be ?

John I have been advised to dowload Spyware on my computer and have thought it to be a plus. The cost of downloading was $39.99 which is fine if I did the right thing which I assumed I did at the time. This morning I received the following which I have copied and pasted for
you to read. Can you tell me what I did that according to this e mail message was not the right thing to do.

Appreciate your help.

Best
Jody see the message I received below.

The following is an email advertisement.

WARNING: You may have Spyware on your PC!

Have you heard of Spyware and Adware on CNN and other news networks?
Spyware is designed to track ALL of your computer activities and transmit this information to 3rd parties - without your permission. Spyware tracks the following computer activities; emails you send to friends/co-workers/family, credit card purchases/bank account access, instant messenger chat, every picture you view, usernames and passwords, every keystroke you type, all sites you visit (including adult sites, bank sites, dating sites, etc).

To find out if your PC is infected - for FREE - download our FREE Scanner - Click Here.

To unsubscribe from future mailings, please click here.
To contact Eblocs.com please write to:
Eblocs.com
1875 Century Park East, Suite 700
Century City, CA 90067

Jeff Agnew · Post by **Jeff Agnew** » 18 Apr 2004 9:43 am

Can you tell me what I did that according to this e mail message was not the right thing to do.

You didn't do anything wrong to cause this notice. It's a Javascript trick to fool you. Unscrupulous companies like this really hack me off.

While you may indeed have spyware on your PC, you don't need to pay anything to get rid of it. Here are three free programs I recommend without reservation:

<ul>[*]AdAware
[*]Spybot Search & Destroy
[*]Spyware Blaster[/list]

Jody Carver · Post by **Jody Carver** » 18 Apr 2004 1:27 pm

Thank You Jeff., I'll give those a try..Thanks so much.

John Gretzinger · Post by **John Gretzinger** » 18 Apr 2004 9:29 pm

Hi Jody -

Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier - but Jeff is esentially correct. What's worse is that some of these products that claim to remove such offending programs like Ad-Aware, SpyBot Search and Destroy, etc. actually are spyware in themselves and block legit programs from being installed to fix your spyware problem.

I've used all three and they all work. I prefer Ad-Aware for most people as it is simple to use and very straight forward - also the basic program is free. They do have a commercial version that blocks, or at least tells you when you are about to load a spyware program. Not a bad deal if you have any doubts about some of the stuff you see when surfing, or if your machine is used by young ones who may not have the best safe computing habits in practice.

John

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MSA D-10 w/Nashville 400
'63 Gibson Hummingbird
16/15c Hammered Dulcimer

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 19 Apr 2004 3:33 am

One of the great things about a Mac is that you can't install any software unless you type in the admin password. Therefore, no spyware gets installed surreptitiously.

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Cal's Corral

Michael Holland · Post by **Michael Holland** » 20 Apr 2004 8:03 am

Thanks for helping us with your expertise, John. I've personally been going through alot of frustration with McAfee 2004 on my Win XP laptop that I use for internet access. Running the virus scans with the most recent updates does not remove the viruses from my computer.

The issue for me at this point is 'how much more time can I put into trying to make their product work'? I'm about 11 or 12 hours into support sessions (via online chat) and I've downloaded and run every file and done the DOS scans as instructed and still the same viruses are on my machine. I feel there's no point in talking to yet another tech at McAfee (and I realize they're just folks reading pat responses from a book).

John Gretzinger · Post by **John Gretzinger** » 20 Apr 2004 8:13 am

Mike -

I'll be sending you a direct email as my opinions on this particular subject are not for a family board and I don't want to get into a religious argument (at the moment).

jdg

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MSA D-10 w/Nashville 400
'63 Gibson Hummingbird
16/15c Hammered Dulcimer

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 20 Apr 2004 11:54 am

For the machines I tend to, that are connected to the web, once the disinfecting hours start to add up, it's 2nd hard disk drive time. That is, go buy a 2nd hard drive for the PC, make it a new master, convert the old master to a slave, run all possible antivirus anti-spy on the old drive before reconfiguring it, then relegate it to the "D" (or higher) drive position. Take the new drive, make it master (or "C") and reload all of the applications on it like a new PC. Hopefully you haven't thrown out your system restore or application CD's.

This way you can always get your old data off the original drive. A new 80 gB HDD should be available for around $100.

This isn't a simple fix, but it's more likely to reduce headaches than gdisk'ing (or fdisk'ing) the original hard drive.

Buck Reid · Post by **Buck Reid** » 20 Apr 2004 11:58 am

Can someone tell me what Ptsnoop is? I recently purchased a used computer from an individual and while doing some house cleaning,i discovered this program. It also appears in the Task Bar. Does this mean it's running in the background all the time? Thanks in advance!

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 20 Apr 2004 10:35 pm

Sounds like some kind of a trojan that does run when you start Windows, Buck. But it's pretty old; may not even do anything anymore. Check this out: http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/ptsnoop.shtml
Also do a Google search for more info if you need it.

C#

Jeff Agnew · Post by **Jeff Agnew** » 21 Apr 2004 4:21 am

The issue for me at this point is 'how much more time can I put into trying to make their product work'?

McAfee is notorious for poor tech support, causing software conflicts, and being a system resource hog. There are other AV products that don't suffer from these problems.

Of course, that doesn't solve your immediate problem.

I've downloaded and run every file and done the DOS scans as instructed and still the same viruses are on my machine.

I hate to ask the obvious here, but you did turn off the system restore feature before trying to remove the viruses, right?

Buck Reid · Post by **Buck Reid** » 21 Apr 2004 4:26 am

Thank you Cal!