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Stroszek
2004-06-25, 15:52
Does anyone have any experience witrh SpyBot and AdWare (or AdAware, maybe?, the cell phone connection was fuzzy)

Apparently my dad is having some problems, and these titles were suggested to him.

Have you used them? Woudl you use something else?

Thanks!

psgamer0921
2004-06-25, 15:55
They work great.

DMBand0026
2004-06-25, 16:44
AdWare is awesome (even though I don't know how to spell it.) Many of my friends still on the "dark side" use it and love it. Gets rid of popups, spyware, viruses, worms...the works. All the crap you have to worry about on the Winell side of things.

alcimedes
2004-06-25, 17:18
it's adaware.

www.lavasoft.de

great download. you might want to go online and check into the advanced settings for adaware though. some of the smarter spy/adware will evade some of spybot and adaware's default detections.

NosferaDrew
2004-06-25, 19:35
Actually it's Ad-aware, but anyway....

Ad-aware is excellent - you just have to remember to update the reference file since they update that file to include new nasties almost everyday.
Just click the "Check for updates button now" button everytime you run the program and you'll be set.
The first time you run it you'll probably find a ton of bugs. Quarantine and remove them, then reboot.

Then run Spybot-Search&Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download) . It's excellent too. It's not updated nearly as much as Ad-aware, but sometimes Spybot finds things that Ad-aware missed.
Again, if it finds bad stuff, remove them and reboot.

One great feature of Spybot that often gets overlooked is the Immunize feature - use it! It adds another layer of protection.

The Spybot/Ad-aware combo takes care of 99.8% of the bad stuff out there.
If things are still not right with his computer you can try CWShredder and HijackThis (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html) <--- Be sure you know what your doing with these two (especially HijackThis. You can mess things up if you delete the wrong thing).

The really super-swell thing that you can do for your Dad is get him to stop using Internet Explorer!
Get him on Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/) (Full featured browser with tabbed browsing, built-in pop-up blocking/Email/Newsgroups etc.) or FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) (Browser only. Small and very fast).

Good luck.

autodata
2004-06-25, 20:11
NosferaDrew is absolutely correct. Running both on a regular basis and using mozilla are the right first steps.

Brad
2004-06-25, 22:02
The really super-swell thing that you can do for your Dad is get him to stop using Internet Explorer!
Get him on Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/) (Full featured browser with tabbed browsing, built-in pop-up blocking/Email/Newsgroups etc.) or FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) (Browser only. Small and very fast).This cannot be reiterated and reinforced enough. (Actually, it's Firefox, btw. :p)

While you're at it, swap out Outlook Express with a fresh copy of Thunderbird (http://mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/). Microsoft security flaws begone!!

A directly related anecdote:

I've had to routinely "fix" my aunt's computer every month or so because it would lock up randomly or BSOD (she's running Win 98) or get slow and she would always complain about getting pop-ups at weird times even when she wasn't surfing the web. Every single time I was able to quickly "fix" the problems by clearing out some apps from the Add/Remove Software panel and by running Spybot and Ad-aware. Every single time I tried my hardest to get her to ditch IE and switch to Firefox. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that she finally took my advice and... guess what? She hasn't had any complaints since!

*sigh*

If only more people would get a clue. :\

On any PC I use, I run both Spybot and Ad-aware at least once a week. I've convinced all my PC-using friends to do the same and they're all grateful for it. Live by these tools -- they are really great in that hellish PC battlefield.

EDS66
2004-06-26, 00:20
Make sure to try Spysweeper from www.webroot.com. It's the best utility of the lot. Ad-aware misses things. Spybot is hack-ware, really; the developer does not guarantee that your system will be stable after installation (read the license agreement).

When I clean machines I do the following: manual assessment of the registry and the hosts file, then I run CWS Shredder and Hijackthis (www.net-integration.net), and finally SpySweeper. I don't bother with Ad-aware anymore.


Hijackthis requires a modicum of understanding of Windows OS. So if you don't know what you are doing, don't use.

Finally, certain stuff, like rootkits, will not be cleaned out. You might as well re-build.

Best.

Stroszek
2004-07-02, 15:43
Thanks for your help, everybody. He's apparently cleaned out all of the spy/ad ware, and I got him to move to Firefox.


The only thing is that he wants his homepage to be msn.com. I tried to tell him to go to Edit>Preferences..., but he said there is no Preferences menu option. I don't have access to a PC, and I don't have access to Firefox either since I run OS 9, so could anyone tell me how you do this on Firefox on a PC? Thanks!

autodata
2004-07-02, 17:38
tools>options...

feend
2004-07-02, 17:41
I believe the preferences are accessed through:

Tools -> Options

Stroszek
2004-07-02, 19:14
I believe the preferences are accessed through:

Tools -> Options
great, thanks!

Paul
2004-07-02, 22:42
Some great advise for getting rid of spyware on windows: http://brad.project-think.com/tipinfo.php?ID=1 (even-though brad already beat me to this thread, I'll throw in his link ;) )

Brad
2004-07-03, 01:23
:lol: Thanks for the plug, Paul! I've actually been meaning to update that page (and some others too).