Virus or Advertising ?

Mrwurm · Aug 19, 2002

Well, all I can say is that my daughter downloads a lot of music files from a site called 'Kazaa'. Now, whenever the computer is turned on in the morning a pornographic ad displays itself touting the benefits of using their 'Innocent Virgin Dialer'. A directory called 'Dialers' appears and shortcuts are placed on the desktop and in the start menu. All I have to do is close this ad, delete the shortcuts, and delete the folder called 'dialers'. But it comes back again the next morning. It does not reappear if I reboot during the day. I'm fairly certain that no one has gone to a porno site in my house. I can only guess that this thing is imbedded in an MP3 file that my daughter plays or its hiding somewhere else. I have norton antivirus and it is fully updated. Can't figure this one out. (quite embarassing too /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif)

DocHeb · Aug 19, 2002

I think you have a Trojan. Try going to <A target="_blank" HREF=http://zdnet.search.com/search?channel=56&cat=279tag=st.zd.sr.srch.zdnet&q=removing+trojans>ZDNet.com</A> and read up on some background material, while the greater TBN mindtrust computer geeks come up with suggestions.

BobT · Aug 19, 2002

TBNers,

Kazaa uses "hidden" ad messages. Go to <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.Lavasoftusa.com>http://www.Lavasoftusa.com</A>.

Ad-aware 5.83
Ad-aware is a free multi spyware removal utility that scans your memory, registry and hard drives for known spyware and scumware components and lets you remove them safely. It is updated frequently.

Run the program from their web site. It will find and remove the source of these unwanted ads for you.

Kazaa was recently updated and now can track who downloads what. Since it is considered an illegal activity by record companies, there could be legal aspects to use of Kazaa. Use at you own risk.

cstocks · Aug 19, 2002

It may be a small program that was inadvertently or innocently set up and installed into your computer. Or, like BobT says, it may be part of Kazaa. I am no computer geek so I cannot explain why it is there when you boot up every morning but does not re-appear when you reboot during the day. I will share with you what limited knowledge I have and maybe it will help.

There are a couple of things you can do to try to find out more about it's existence on your computer. Hit the start button on the bottom of your desktop and click on Find (Windows 98) and type in dialer and see if anything shows up. Also type in virgin and innocent and any other related keywords that you may think of and see what shows up. If nothing else you may be able to verify if a program has been put into your computer. If you can identify a program that should not be there go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs. See if the suspect shows up there. If it does you should be able to uninstall the program and be rid of it.

Something else you can look at is go to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSCONFIG.EXE (again in Windows 98) and Click on the MSConfig.exe icon. Click on the last tab - Start Up - and see if any suspicious programs are set up to open when you boot up. If any appears, uncheck it and that will at least (hopefully) keep it from opening when you boot up in the morning.

If neither of the above shows anything, then it might be a part of the Kazaa program or even possibly a Trojan or some other type of virus.

Hope this helps.

RanchMan · Aug 19, 2002

I'll second the Lavasoft “Ad-Aware”scanner. It's a great utility and I find their free version works pretty well (just too cheap I suppose to upgrade to their version that costs money.) It's amazing how much spyware winds up on your PC even when you are "careful."

Although I never had any problem with pop-up (or pop-under) ads that had pornography, I get REALLY tired of all the long distance/X10/cell phone/etc. ads that did pop up. In addition to the Lavasoft product, to “kill” pop-ups, I installed “Pop-up Stopper” - again, the free version. It works really well most of the time too. (Go Zonealarm is free, but has some compatibility issues with some software/OS's (see Microsoft's web site - and it isn't just MS being "big brother" as I encountered some of these issues myself). Of course, there are lots of <A target="_blank" HREF=http://hardware.search.com/search?q=firewall&tag=srch>others</A> out there too. Not something required, but something worth thinking about.

Mrwurm · Aug 20, 2002

Thanks to all that responded. I am now armed with new knowledge to deal with this invader.

Mrwurm · Aug 20, 2002

Great /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif Ad-Aware removed 69 bad thingies on my system. Some were files, some were in the registry.
Thanks for the tip. Kazaa will not work now, it says I removed a necesarry part of the program. I think I know what they are up to. Their software won't work unless the spy-ware is present. Pretty sneaky.

BobT · Aug 20, 2002

Hi Jerry,

Exactly so, Ad Aware removes the operational files for all scum/spy ware, and so they no longer will work.

There is a verion of Kazaa, called KazaaLite, which does run without the spyware pop up component. However, it is not well supported. If you do install it successfully, it will from time to time pop up and say there is a "newer" version. Do NOT download ANY newer version, since that will reinstall the spy/scum ware components, and you'll be back to square one.

As noted previously, all of these peer-to-peer sharing programs are considered illegal by the recording industry, and for the most part, also by the courts. Use at own risk...

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.kazaalite.com/>http://www.kazaalite.com/</A>

Mrwurm · Aug 21, 2002

Thanks again BobT. Now for the ethical debate.

I know that peer to peer file sharing is hurting the record industry, but they are slow to move in creating their own solution. My teenage daughter is not interested in buying entire albums for $16 to $20. She just wants the latest hit song by a particular artist. If the record industry would sell music 'cafeteria style' with consumers picking and choosing the tracks they want, then maybe they could recover some lost sales. I believe the accounting world calls this 'margin pricing'. Any income that is greater than cost contributes to the bottom line.

I did some testing with the ad-aware software. I removed all the spy-ware that kazaa did NOT NEED to run. I then opened kazaa and let it work for a few minutes. Every time I did this it replaced some of the spy-ware that I removed. Pretty unscrupulous program! Kazaa has now gone to the recycle bin.