I'm feeling homicidal

[neilly2]

I\'m feeling homicidal

Spyware and adware has found a home on my computer and I'm at wits end. I have Pest Patrol, Ad-Aware, and Spybot, not to mention the firewall on the harddrive and the router (I was given AdSubtract as a gift, but it only blocks the pop-up and does not remove the bad files). I perform daily scans with all 3 until they show nothing, but within minutes my computer is locking down with ads.

I'm talking 3 to 4 ads per page, and I'm not doing a lot of surfing. Google, tractorbynet, CNN, and ESPN is about the extent of it.

1. I can't believe that marketers think I'm going to patronize them when they're bogging me down to the point I'm at the point of having to buy a new computer. This is like kicking your front door in and punching your wife just so they can drop off brochures.

2. I keep telling myself to send emails to the all the companies that advertise this way to yell at them, but I'll never have the time.

3. Is there a silver bullet to getting all of this crap off of my machine??

4. I think a lot of it has to do with malware in my registry but I'm not computer savvy enough to clean that up.

This was more of a vent session, but any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Egon]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

There was a thread on this same subject a few months ago. Think some said that too many programs may interfer with each other. Can't remember the name of the thread.

Egon

 

[Inspector507]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

You might try virus protection AVG at Grisoft and also a pop up stopper from Panic Ware
Both are free and give good results
Might also try a new browser from Mozilla

I like it a lot. There are a few websites it won't work with, but not that many.

 

[fishman]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

Neilly2,

I can relate, after a recent run-in with spyware etc. imported by not-so-computer-savvy daughter who thinks she knows everything. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Wasted lots of time trying to fix it, then finally went to the local computer store and bought Webroot "Internet Essentials" with four programs: pop-up washer, window washer, spam shredder, and spy sweeper. Very easy to install and use. Cost was about $70 plus tax, and worth every penny when I nuked the &*$^#$&% on my computer. You can buy spy sweeper seperately for about $25, and that is the most useful of them all imho.

I highly recommend this product for someone in your situation. Your sanity is worth more than $70. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[OkeeDon]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

As far as the new browser is concerned, I'm now using FireFox from Mozilla, and I like it. No matter how much adware is downloaded, FireFox has not yet slowed down the way IE6 did. However, the browser is not doing much, if anything, to stop the adware downloads. In fact, I got a trojan virus the other day, which Norton caught. I get pretty homicidal, myself. A few days ago, I got 106 emails for a pharmacy site before I figured out a filter that would stop them.

 

[DannyD]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

I am usin avant browser and not having trouble with these things. It does a good job of blinking out the add stuff etc.

also allows you to dump all the websites you have visited, which helps alot.

 

[JDgreen227]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

Although AOL touts that the latest version (9.0 Security) has Acafee virus scan built in, I purchased the online version of the software about 8 months ago after the 90 day free trial of McAfee (provided by Dell) expired. I've been very happy with the software to date.

About four months ago I decided to install a combination of McAfee products for more protection. Their 2005 Anti-Spyware and 2005 Version 6.0 Personal Firewall Plus are a great buy...with the $35 mail in rebate I got them almost free.

I can vouch they work well, after installing them I was able to remove three spyware and adware programs and none of those have returned. Although I do a lot of web surfing, I've had zero problems since I installed these products.

We tried using Spybot to remove unwanted spyware and adware on our older PC that used Windows 2000...it was a waste of time and made little improvement. Sure, Spybot is free, but you get what you pay for.

 

[EddieWalker]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

When I was hit, I called Microsoft for some help. They directed me to a website called www.spysweeper.com, but now the site doesn't seem to exist and instead I get Webroot.

They spyweeper site was free and it fixed all my issues. I don't know about webroot.

As for sending the emails, I'd recomend against it. One of the things they are looking for is valid email address's. If you conctact them, you confirm that your address is a good one, and they can pass it along to their buddies.

They know that so many people per million contacted will buy from them. The more confirmed address's they have, the higher that ratio climbs, and the more valuable your address is for them to sell to others.

 

[MossRoad]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

<font color="blue">This was more of a vent session, but any ideas would be appreciated. </font>

Back up your data, then wipe out the machine and start over. Once your operating system is restored, load your firewall software, your spyware software, your anti-virus software, etc.. and download all the updates and keep them current. Download and install all of the Windows security updates, as well. Then, find a copy of Norton Go Back. This software will save your sanity. I have it on our PCs and if they get goofed up, I can restore the entire PC to a good known state in about as much time as it takes to reboot. It is priceless. On some older versions it will not save your data, so good backups before reverting your hard drive are required.

 

[BigDave]

Re: I\'m feeling homicidal

ESPN had always been pop-up & spyware happy. I did a verification clean up on my machine with Yahoo Anti-Spy and then navigated to ESPN. My browser recorded two tracking cookies that were attempted to be installed but blocked.

I also run three layers of pop-blockers preventing ESPN's new trick of putting the pop-up behind the active window to get around some of the popular pop-up blockers.

I did the same test for CNN and had blocked pop-ups and 6 tracking cookies denied access by my system.