Spyware - What do you use?

fly

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Oct 1, 2004
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I've got a machine that gots some weird shit going on. Not only is it slow as molasses, but it was loaded with spyware. I used hijack this, avg, and spybot to remove everything I could find that was bad. However, the fact that AdAware either crashes everytime, or during the scan it will report finding items only to show the machine clean when its done, leads me to believe that something else is going on here.

Whats in your swiss army kit?
 
Slow being a relative term...but Norton is a resource hog. It tries way too hard to make sure you know it is still there and doing something.
 
Slow being a relative term...but Norton is a resource hog. It tries way too hard to make sure you know it is still there and doing something.

Honestly, I know what you are saying but...


I was just wondering last night if my N360 was even working still cause I havent seen or heard from it at all. I have everything set to automatic so I never even see it, dont even notice its on the machine. Its been doing its job though, I love it
 
you already said it, but i run a HJT scan and post it on castlecops.com. they're really good about providing a fix for whatever they see.
 
avg and spybot as well as adaware

but I only use those when cleaning someone else's, I don't get my porn from google you freak :fly:
 
hijackthis
spybot
ad-aware (not much anymore since v.2007 sucks ass)
spywareblaster (doesn't remove spyware but keeps it from being installed in the first place)
windows defender (on a rare occasion)

list of free antivirus scanners (some remove files for you as well):
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.ewido.net/en/onlinescan/
http://www.pandasecurity.com/taiwan/homeusers/solutions/activescan/
http://usa.kaspersky.com/products_services/free-virus-scanner.php
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

Now adays, I don't even screw around with trying to remove the junk while using the computer. I just take the drive out, plug it into my USB2.0 to IDE bridge adapter (which will work with any IDE/SATA/laptop IDE drive), hook it to a working clean computer, and then run said scanners on the plugged in drive. That's about the only way to remove rootkits and persistent viruses/malware.

In the worst cases, I may recommend reformatting/reinstalling. In that case, I just back up the user's document and settings folder, so as to not bring over more viruses/malware onto the computer again, once it has been reformatted/reinstalled.
 
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we have ad-aware on every comp here and I rarely cross any spyware issues at all anymore...even from my lawyer that surfs porn sites investigating copywrite/trademark infringement :fly:
 
how do people get spyware? i've never used any kind of antivirus or what not programs, and have yet to have any problems.

They install applications that spyware piggybacks on. Then it just baloons from there.

If you have ever used any of the following applications, you have spyware:

AIM
MSN Messenger
Yahoo Messenger
QuickTime
Weatherbug (or any other variant of the on desktop weather information)
Almost every single popular p2p application.
 
They install applications that spyware piggybacks on. Then it just baloons from there.

If you have ever used any of the following applications, you have spyware:

AIM
MSN Messenger
Yahoo Messenger
QuickTime
Weatherbug (or any other variant of the on desktop weather information)
Almost every single popular p2p application.

Trillian ftw.