i used ad-aware on my cousin'z computer and i found over 300 items

Bringing this old thread back to life again..

After browsing trhough my server logs now, I believe a lot of you may need do do some christmas cleaning on your computers..

I've discovered that several of you (don't know who, just the IPs) have a lot of different ad/spy/scum/malware etc.. installed on your computers..

Funwebproducts seems to be the "winner" of those kind of things..

Read through some of the first posts in this thread to find some good tips on how you can deal with these kind of things..

Feel free to add to this thread yourself if you have some more knowledge on the subject...

I'm pretty paranoid when it comes to spyware and they did a test for anti-spyware programs in here and the winner is GIANT Antispyware. It managed to identify & remove 100 out of 134 spyware items where Spybot S&D managed to identify just 40 and Ad-Aware 82.

I've been trying the program for a week now and I think it's pretty good. Active memory&browser shields take a lot less processing power than in Webroot Spysweeper which was my previous choice and Giant also scans pretty fast.

Here are some links.

http://www.giantcompany.com/ - Home of Giant Antispyware.
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/main-nf.htm - Great infosite.
http://www.lavasoft.com/ - Home of Ad-Aware.

lavasoft adaware is a good program because they have a forum setup so if the program picks up something and you can't delete it just show it to their forum and they'll tell you what to do. usually in those situation it involves registry editing and they have a step by step process that'll walk you through it. they're pretty good about those things.

im on holidays and bored so at the moment i am trying to compile a list of useful utilities.
this site:
http://topcc.org/utilities.html has a lot of good links to programs on it
so far:
spybot search and destroy
lavasoft adaware
Acrobat reader
Core FTP http://www.download.com/Core-FTP-Lit...ml?tag=lst-0-1
Firefox http://www.mozilla.org/
Hijackthis http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html
Sandra http://www.download.com/SANDRA-Lite/...ml?tag=lst-0-1
(sandra is an awesome program which monitors pretty much your entire computer. it also has benchmarking capabilities)
Trillian www.ceruleanstudios.com
Powertools - from microsoft.com
winzip and winrar
zonealarm

@ Redleg

Can you post the IP's?

Originally Posted by rOk

@ Redleg

Can you post the IP's?

Hm..
Then I'll have to go through 2gb of server logs again...

It's at least 30-40 unique IPs pr day for Funwebproducts alone, so it will be too many IPs to post here.

Originally Posted by Hegario

I'm pretty paranoid when it comes to spyware and they did a test for anti-spyware programs in here and the winner is GIANT Antispyware. It managed to identify & remove 100 out of 134 spyware items where Spybot S&D managed to identify just 40 and Ad-Aware 82.
.......

http://www.giantcompany.com/ - Home of Giant Antispyware.
.

It is the best!

I've downloaded and tried it now.
It identified two dialers (luckily I have ADSL...) and a couple of other low thread adware scripts that ad-aware and spybot s&D didn't find...

Hi,

wow nice catch .

Let me add a few things to this thread which provides nice info about some things.

Adware/Spyware :-> not always bad ........Spyware is considered bad but Adware sometimes Come bundeled with the Freeware programs you download it's a way to put Advertisments into it........they have to earn some money too .

You can use AD-Aware and Spybot to remover.

and all you find with them is not bad ................i have seen a few useful programs start to stop working after you reove the Adaware in them........like my ISP had Gator Advertisments in it AD-Aware remover the gator Ads and it stopped working.

Scumware as you put it includes everythig that is bad ( Virus , Trojans , Worms and Adware/spywares too ) it is also called malware.

P2P and P0rn are the major sources of Scumware ...............the programs you donnlwoad form P2P might be bundeled with a virus or trojan you just can't trust it so try to get it form the Authors Web Site.

For Virus you require an Antivirus .....................but one thing to remember is Antivirus are not particullarly good when it comes to Trojans and worms ..there are plenty of free of them as said earlier AVG Free Edition is the best according to me .

For Trojans and Worms i don't Trust Antivirus they catch a few of them but fail most of the time....... i would recommend Download TDS-3 Anti-Trojan System and Moosoft the Cleaner ..................TDS i think is the best .

And Updating Your Windows is also important................ Microsoft launches Security patches regularly .................hackers and trojans use holes in your OS to attack your Computer .............Microsoft tries to patch these holes as soon as they find them so pressing that Windows Update button on a regular basis is not a bad thing at all or you can Click on this link to update your Windows Operation System update your OS regularly.. --> http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

and there is one another kind of Scumware called the Browser hijacks or the Cool Web Search Trojan.............when you find that your Internet explorer Browser home page is being changed to some Website you haven't set it to .there are chances it is the CWS Trojan

CWShredder is a good tool against it and Verson 2.1 releasd today press the little Update button now.

.............and about HijackThis ........it is a good dignostic tool but i wouldn't recommend it to everyone ..........until you know what you are looking for don't try to play with it it is dangerous too ..........you might delete some useful things with it .........not for non-tech people.


one good option is to Stop Using Internet Explorer altogether and you will see less and less Spyware and Adware in your scans ..............being the most widely used used Browser IE it is more attacked too ..................i would recommend Mozilla FireFox ..............it's Faster and still Hijack Free ......there is still no known browser hijack for it.


and the most Important thing to remember ...................with all these tools and they are useless Unless you update them ..............They are as good as their reference files ....................so don't forget to update them once every week ..................or it's not even worth installing them .

So Update you Antivirus and AD-Aware or Spybot regularly ...............or they would be useless .....................always keep the latest verson alwys keep their reference Files updated ..............every minute a new virus is written .......and that makes them useless against the new ones if you don't update them .


-=SF_13=-

Good info SwordFish..

Originally Posted by SwordFish_13

Adware/Spyware :-> not always bad ........Spyware is considered bad but Adware sometimes Come bundeled with the Freeware programs you download it's a way to put Advertisments into it........they have to earn some money too .

I can add that the Alexa toolbar does also raise big red flags on most adware/spyware removers, but it's not really harmfull at all.
It just records some info about your surfing habbits to update the Alexa ranking etc..

I find the toolbar quite helpfull, especially to find related sites to the ones I'm currently visiting..

You can download it here:
http://download.alexa.com/index.cgi?p=Dest_W_t_40_B2