In another thread, I outlined how many email accounts I monitor and the amount of spam I get. In a never ending quest to eliminate all of the spam, I found an anti-spam program that supposedly used a response method to eliminate spam. There are several fee-based programs like this, especially Spam Arrest, but this one was supposedly free.
I downloaded it and tried to set it up, but didn't like what I was seeing -- nothing specific, but it didn't seem to be working right, and I just got a gut feeling that it was doing something it shouldn't. So, I uninstalled it.
The end result was that my system was really messed up. I could no longer retrieve IP numbers from the cable modem (either at dome on the wireless system or at the office on the directly connected modem), Ad-Aware told me there were additional processes running that I didn't know about, and Windows XP started giving messages to me about being out of system resources.
I don't know what this program did/was still doing, but I suspect it might be some sort of scam to gain access to a computer. None of the defenses (firewall, Ad-Aware, Norton, etc) that I have set up were alerting me, but they wouldn't -- this was something I had set up internally.
I fought it for two days, then remembered System Restore. I set a System Restore for the day before I had installed the so-called anti-spam software, and suddenly, everything was back to normal. The only thing I lost was my current score in the game Free Cell; it was set back to the score as of the system restore date.
Bless you, Microsoft, and bless the day I installed XP.
PS, I'll post the name of the program only so others might remember and avoid it, if they come across it -- it was called Mail Sword.
I downloaded it and tried to set it up, but didn't like what I was seeing -- nothing specific, but it didn't seem to be working right, and I just got a gut feeling that it was doing something it shouldn't. So, I uninstalled it.
The end result was that my system was really messed up. I could no longer retrieve IP numbers from the cable modem (either at dome on the wireless system or at the office on the directly connected modem), Ad-Aware told me there were additional processes running that I didn't know about, and Windows XP started giving messages to me about being out of system resources.
I don't know what this program did/was still doing, but I suspect it might be some sort of scam to gain access to a computer. None of the defenses (firewall, Ad-Aware, Norton, etc) that I have set up were alerting me, but they wouldn't -- this was something I had set up internally.
I fought it for two days, then remembered System Restore. I set a System Restore for the day before I had installed the so-called anti-spam software, and suddenly, everything was back to normal. The only thing I lost was my current score in the game Free Cell; it was set back to the score as of the system restore date.
Bless you, Microsoft, and bless the day I installed XP.
PS, I'll post the name of the program only so others might remember and avoid it, if they come across it -- it was called Mail Sword.
