I don't consider myself particulary 'techy', so this isn't going to be terribly complicated.
I recently loaded some software on my work PC, coz we get these discs with the computer/net magazines, and they looked OK. One of them was a handy thing, the other sucked - this is just me pointing out the good vs the bad.
The good: This is a product from Lavasoft called Ad-aware 6.0. It is a tool to scan
Quote:drives for known Datamining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, Keyloggers, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components
So I try it out and it straight away identifies about 35 items that have been snuck onto the hard-drive. I take a look at these (it produces a log) and what do you know, just about all of them have arrrived with.....
The bad: Sticky Notes, the other piece of software I just added. It lets you tack little electronic Post-It notes on your screen, I thought it was kinda neat, but in reality I didn't use it and the data-mining thing was a liability. So I decide it has to go. Easier said than done.
Firstly, I use
Add/Delete Programs in
Settings. Won't go. Find the folder in
Programs and delete that. Short-cut is still on the Start Menu so that has to go also, got to find that too. Run Ad-aware again, **** -
there's still software hidden away! Find it, delete it. All gone now? Nope. At Start-up next day, error message comes up - where's StickyNotes exe file? Bastard!! Out with that!
So, in summary: Ad-aware, good. StickyNotes, bad.
Lesson: you don't really get something for nothing. Watch your virtual back.