Spontaneous Infestation

[LstBrunnenG]

I went to swim practice around 4, came back around 9 (there was a meeting afterwards, oh joy), and BAM! There were a crapload of new shortcuts on my desktop (things like poker and bingo and crap), and I had a brand new helpful searcher bar thing in internet explorer. It wasn't anything I did right before I left; I played Vice City all day and then took a short nap before practice. I even have SP2! I uninstalled the bar thing through add/remove programs and then all the shortcuts disappeared, and now both Norton Antivirus and Ad-aware (both updated as of five seconds ago) are saying I'm clean as a whistle. What the frell happened? How did this thing get on?

 

[oldpablo]

Anyone else in the house? Check the Internet history to see if someone was surfing on your machine...

 

[jaffy]

Try out spybot too. Sounds like someone was using your machine, and when they saw a dialog box, they just clicked "ok".

 

[ComputerBox34]

Even though you removed it through add/remove, run Spybot. I'm sure that bar your talking about left a nice little present(s) behind. Yea, someone had to of accepted those downloads in order for it to get onto your PC. Ask everyone in the house.

BTW, NEVER accept any of those download windows that pop up out of no where. They are usually spyware shit and it tries to confuse you for something you need. I think SP2 prevents those windows now.

 

[jaffy]

They are usually spyware shit and it tries to confuse you for something you need. I think SP2 prevents those windows now.

Mozilla/Opera does too

 

[MorfiusX]

Mozilla/Opera does too

I've been a Windows guru for some time. (not a f4nb0y (excuse the funky spelling, but for some reason it's blocked...) though) I just started using firefow a couple months ago and love it.

Family members were always asking for help with their PCs. I'd go over, run AdAware, and find 75 spyware programs.

I have found a decent combination for keeping thier systems clean:

- Spyware Blaster
- SpyBot S&D - Always running like an antivirus
- FireFox

I've even began to deploy Spyware Blaster and Spybot at work. FireFox is a bit of a streach for most of my users, but I can run the other two and be fine.

SpyBot and Spyware Blaster have reduced the number of spyware related problems on a given machine by 99+%.