posted on July 10, 2004 03:39:20 PM new
I installed the eBay toolbar & Spy Sweeper says it is spy type of program that will report whever I search on the web. Now I am not sure I want to keep it.
[ edited by sanmar on Jul 10, 2004 03:40 PM ]
posted on July 10, 2004 04:05:48 PM new
The Ebay toolbar is spyware. Get rid of it. Spybot S&D also sees it as spyware. In fact, beware of any program that has the word toolbar in the title. If you pay attention to the titles of the spyware programs a scan looks for, you'll notice at least a dozen toolbars that are spyware. Yahoo Toolbar is the only one I know of that is NOY spyware.
A $75.00 solid state device will always blow first to protect a 25 cent fuse ~ Murphy's Law
posted on July 10, 2004 05:01:26 PM new
I don't have too much of a problem unless I shut down my firewall. Then I have pop-ups and downloads onto my machine constantly. Last week I shut down my firewall and four programs ended up being installed without my knowledge. I suggest at least once a week that you go into Add/Remove Programs and make sure nothing has been put there without your knowledge. That's where I found the programs installed automatically on my machine. It takes a lot of nerve!
posted on July 11, 2004 05:41:06 AM new
Good advice! The best thing for everyone to do is have a good virus checker and firewall running on their PC, then download both SpyBot and Ad-Aware for free. Run these once a week and your computer should run smoothly.
Here's a question...I wonder if Norton or McAfee (or both) have ever been behind some of the viruses going around? You know, creating more business for themselves? Just a thought...
"Who's tending the bar? Sniping works up a thirst"
posted on July 11, 2004 02:21:46 PM new
Thank you all, I just removed it. Spy Sweeper seems to do the job ok. It cleared out 37 different spyware that I didn't know I had.
Life Is Too Short To Drink Bad Wine
posted on July 11, 2004 03:09:01 PM new
I like the Google toolbar because of the pop up blocker. Seems to me that you could "choose" whether or not you wanted to send back info. No spyware has ever picked up anything on it.
I also run HiJackThis regularlly. I know what is supposed to show up there and what is not supposed to show up there. That way I KNOW nothing is on there.
posted on July 11, 2004 03:46:45 PM new
Well what do you know!? At the http://www.spywareinfo.com/ (spybot etc.) homepage sanmar, there's a great big ad for Spy Sweeper. I didn't know that the same people that make Window Washer made it. I thought I'd read somewhere that one of those Spy programs (I thought it was Spy Sweeper) has a free download but then you have to pay them to clean it up for you. Although I know you did buy yours. I love Window Washer though. It is a very nice easy to use tool to completely clean up your computer, I run mine at least once a day.
OTOH, there are two more very interesting articles over there.
"As many of you no doubt have heard, Yahoo! recently released a new toolbar which they claim detects and removes spyware. The toolbar uses technology licensed from Pest Patrol, the vendor of a popular antispyware product.
Unfortunately, it turns out that Yahoo! has decided to set the toolbar to ignore all so-called "adware". The toolbar forces the user specifically to set it to seek out adware.
The reason for this decision appears to be the business relationship between Overture, which is owned entirely by Yahoo!, and the Claria corporation, which creates and distributes Gator. As it turns out, Yahoo!, through Overture, provides 31% of Claria's entire annual revenue."
and....
"The Internet Storm Center has announced a very scary discovery. They have found a browser hijacker, installed as a Browser Helper Object (BHO), that will monitor what are supposed to be secure, encrypted browsing sessions and steal passwords. These passwords then are forwarded to a web based script at www.refestltd.com. It appears that this site now has been deleted.
The hijacker is loaded from a web page as if it were a .gif image file. The file is not really an image. It is a compressed trojan dropper that installs a .dll file as a BHO. How the trojan is executed is unknown. The most likely explanation is that the page calling the file exploits some flaw in Microsoft Internet Explorer."
posted on July 11, 2004 04:00:18 PM new
re: the above mentioned article about the BHO.
Which is why I run Hijack this, so I know what's running and what's not supposed to be running. For anyone that has never seen it, it looks like this:
Logfile of HijackThis v1.98.0
Scan saved at 5:49:52 PM, on 7/10/2004
Platform: Windows XP SP1 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP1 (6.00.2800.1106)
Sniping works up a thirst"