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Fri 22 Aug, 2003 10:15 am
My computer has been a mess lately -- pop-ups all over the place and all sorts of other problems with staying connected to AOL.
Last night, when I logged onto A2K, I got a pop wup message that a "spy" had been detected -- and it gave me the opportunity to download a FREE spy dector called Spy Hunter. The "spy", it mentioned, enabled companies to spy on what I was looking at -- and made them able to send me pop-ups.
I downloaded the thing -- and it identified about 30 "SERIOUS" category spys -- and when I clicked to delete them -- a message came up that I had to buy the download that is used to delete the files.
What is this all about?
Anybody know?
Ad-Aware
Howdy Frank:
Nothing but a sales pitch..
If you are concerned, go to
www.lavasoftusa.com and download Ad-Aware and run it..
Delete all it finds and you will be good to go..
Ad-Aware is free and it will clean out whatever problems it finds..
Murray
You have scumware on your computer. Use Ad-Aware or
SpyBot to remove it.
Thanks Murray and Craven.
Loathe as I am to leave A2K even for a few minutes, I'm off to do it right now.
spybot is the best IMO also run a virus scan when you are done as it could be another cause.
I've already done 3 virus scans.
I am having trouble downloading the Ad-Aware, but I expect my brother-in-law this weekend -- and he's a whiz with these things.
I am a buffoon! (With things electronic!)
Frank, If you want I'll email you ad aware. But try spybot. IMO it's far better.
Craven, I've had ad-aware for the last year or so, seems ok, why is spybot better? Keep it in simple terms I'm not a techie.
It catches some scumware Adaware doesn't, and it deletes things you don't want it to less often.
it searches for more spyware then adware
This might sound a daft question, being a non techie many of my questions sound that way.
On the strenght of what I read here today, I gave ad aware the heave ho and installed spybot, so far so good, but a while later I noticed that my firewall was down (sygate)
Question is this, can this be down to spybot? I've had firewall for several months with no problem, within a very short time of running spybot the firewall is down?????
can you elaborate on what you mean by down? Not running? Allowing programs in/out without question?
As to why spybot is better there are a few things not mentioned here:
A) spybot searches in places where the scumware is known to be instead of searching the whole computer so it's faster. I also keep adaware just for kicks though.
B) Ad-Aware always had fewer definitions than spybot but sptbot is updating definitions while AdAware stopped (at least the refupdate tool stopped working and was getting a 404 error).
anywho I can't imagine why spybot would harm your firewall.
I mentioned point B......
Ya know, there is no mutually exclusive criteria for posts. ;-) Plus, point B wasn't that spybot has more but that spybot is still updating the database of them while AdAware is not.
well you said nobody had mentioned it so I was correcting you, you said adware always had fewer deff's so the bottom line of the post as I took it was that spybot is going to find more spyware
Monger,
By down I mean it's not working, I had no firewall, the icon had gone from my systray.
( it's back there now because I've got it up and running again)
Craven
I've downloaded spybot and have used it a couple of times. Got rid of a lot of junk -- and I already notice that the pop-ups have stopped.
Thanks.
I needed that!
Just another satisfied user listing preferences.
All Freeware.
Agnitum Outpost Firewall
http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/
Spybot
http://security.kolla.de/
SpywareBlaster
http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareblaster.html
Ad-Aware [occasionally]
These three keep my setup clean.
I've not used a virus package yet on my computer! No probs!
Best regards, Bill
BTW -- the vendor asks that we try the product -- and if we are satisfied, we should re-access the site and give a donation.
What would be an appropiate amount for this kind of thing?
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