searching for spyware

.

I'm feeling too lazy to type much at the moment, but the following is a cut-n-paste from one of my links/notes files. (Damn - after all that I've gone and typed too much anyway!)

www.sysinternals.com/ntw2...cexp.shtml

Excellent Windows Process Explorer v8.30 (freeware)


For best results, needs the following packages installed as well:
* "Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows"
* "Windows symbol packages"


www.microsoft.com/whdc/de...llx86.mspx

Download page for "Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows"


www.microsoft.com/whdc/de...olpkg.mspx

Download page for "Windows symbol packages"


(After devoting quite some time and effort to installing the Microsoft symbol packages etc, as the program readme recommends, I couldn't see anything different with the output. But in some circs there may be advantages to having that set up as well.)

Re: searching for spyware

I use Spybot and another program called "HijackThis". You can search in yahoo for this program and download it, it worked perfectly for me

I had many issues with spyware in the past and i had to spent a whole weekend to register all the processes that run in my laptop in an excel file and eventually clean up the mess. Now, when something is wrong, i can quickly find which is the "guilty" process by comparing the list i have with the one in the task manager

You can find what each processes is about by putting its name in a search engine. I had a few notorious ones running >:

As a general advice, never click in any pop ups or download any software you are not 100% sure what it is about...

Good luck!

searching for spyware

msconfig can be helpful to see what loading on startup.
Many of these things are attached to MSIE in some way, like silly little toolbars. Choose Firefox as an alternative browser and you won't look back.

If you're worried about these things 'calling home' then a firewall might help - although many run over http.
The ultimate paranoia will lead you to reinstalling Windows, installing a firewall and signature matching IDS. Sounds ridiculous - but how do you know the spyware remover isn't spying on you?

Re: Giant/MS

Of course the other solution is to get castrated, dress in latex, and buy a Mac

Re: Giant/MS

You poor, poor, poor, poor people!

Re: Giant/MS

One thing I did notice with the MS one is that it has an autoupdate - frequently lets me know that it has received updated definitions.

Giant/MS

Just have to add a vote for the MS offering.

I actually subscribed to Giant before MS bought them out & it's been excellent. Conversely to yourself I found that it turned up quite a few baddies that Adaware (which I really liked) never found. Between the MS firewall, the MS anti-spyware and a free AV product like AntiVir Guard you can protect yourself for nowt these days.

F.

Thanks

Thanks. I downloaded three:

1. the MS one (called Giant or something)
2. Ad-aware
3. Spybot.

I ran them in that order, and although MS found and removed a lot of stuff, Ad-aware still found some left over, and even after removing those Spybot then noticed a few more. I forgot to check whether they got rid of Internet Optimizer.

Next time I'll run them in different orders to see whether any are redundant, but I'm guessing they each have their specialities.

I cannot believe how much stuff had got into my machine in the few hours I'd had it (from new), even with firewalls.

Re: Why search here when there's Google?

> Quite sensibly, he'd sooner trust recommendations from here

.. as he's a newbie that makes sense

Lavasoft Adaware is free and not bad. I downloaded the free MS spyware detector and it whirred and clicked a while and came up with....

nothing

yep - nothing, nada, zilch

I fear I must be leading a sheltered life and missing out on all the good sites that will load me up with spyware

No idea what the product is you've found trying to connect. Google gives a url www.internet-optimizer.com/ but the webwasher software here doesn't like it...

Forbidden
You were denied access because:
Access denied by WebWasher DynaBLocator content category. The requested URL belongs to the following category: Computer Crime.

.. but it seems to be less than friendly according to www.doxdesk.com/parasite/InternetOptimizer.html which also seems to contain some removal instructions.

Re: Why search here when there's Google?

Quite sensibly, he'd sooner trust recommendations from here than unknown (to him) sources on the web where he probably got the parasites from in the first place.

spycatcher

Microsoft's free one seems to be flavour of the month. I've got it and it seems to do its thing quite inconspicuously, having initially turfed up about a dozen suspected e-snitching programs.

Why search here when there's Google? Quite a few free spyware removers around. Spybot, Adaware are both free, Webroot free but with update subscription. Both last two seem to find much more than Spybot.

Can anyone recommend a good spyware and parasite detector and crusher?

I've not had my laptop for a day yet, and I've already found something called Internet Optimizer that is trying to link to the net. I can't delete it or remove it.

I tried searching the bulletin board for "spyware", but I've found since coming on this board that the search never returns anything, whether I specify subject or body or both. Does anyone know what it searches, exactly?