Re: Need help with spyware/adware

From: Kaylene aka Taurarian (taurarian_at_REMOVE_CAPS_hotmail.com)
Date: 05/27/04 

Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 20:20:34 +1000

In this posting are spyware program links, anti virus online scans and
information about messenger pop ups.

Spyware Programs links:-
www.lavasoftusa.com Ad-Aware
www.security.kolla.de Spybot

SpywareBlaster
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

CWShredder
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Dealing with Unwanted Spyware, Parasites, Toolbars and Search Engines
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

Home Page Setting Changes Unexpectedly, or You Cannot Change Your Home Page
Setting
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=320159

Downloadable McAfee AVERT Stinger:
Stinger: http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses. It is not a
substitute for full anti-virus protection, but rather a tool to assist
administrators and users when dealing with an infected system. Stinger utilizes
next generation scan engine technology, including process scanning, digitally
signed DAT files, and scan performance optimizations.

Perhaps an online security/virus check
Symantec
http://security.norton.com/sscv6/default.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym
Trend Micro House Call:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
Panda ActiveScan;
http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm
McAfee FreeScan:
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
Kaspersky Labs On-line Virus Checker:
http://www.kaspersky.com/remoteviruschk.html
BitDefender Online Scan:
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php

Messenger Service Window That Contains an Internet Advertisement Appears
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=330904

Enable or Disable Internet Connection Firewall in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;283673
NB: AOL is not compatible with Windows XP Internet Connection Firewall (ICF)
If you have AOL, you should contact AOL and/or get a 3rd party firewall.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/communicate/stopspam.asp
Stopping Advertisements with Messenger Service Titles

Windows Messenger – stopping spam and pop ups
The issue is that currently ANYONE can actually send you a message through the
.NET Messenger network without being on YOUR contact list!
You can change this so that people will have to add you to their contact lists
before they can send you a message (which will have the effect of blocking these
Spam messages in the future).
Open up the main Messenger window, click Tools, then Options, then the Privacy
tab, click All users and then click the Block >> button.
This way you can manually add who you want to receive messages from and block
all others.

"mcginni" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:9132B121-8424-4BAE-9812-025C2FF0AE24@microsoft.com...
> I think I may have a problem with spyware/adware. A couple of weeks ago, my
finance button that had been set to my bank's web site started coming up some
tax preparers page. Our computer is slower than it was and we get pop-ups
fairly often about "you may have spyware on your computer" wanting to sell us
spyware/adware protection. Our sons have been downloading a good many free
games from the internet. Could this have caused the problem? Is it probably
spyware/adware? Will a system restore help? (The computer was so slow that
you couldn't really do anything. We did run a defragmenter and tried the disc
cleanup, but it would not run. We turned the computer off for about 24 hours
afterwards, and it started performing better. Still not great though, and still
the problems with the spyware pop-ups and my finance page.) My husband did a
scan through one of those free scan things and it said we had 47 infected files
or so. But our Norton anti-virus isn't showing anything. Please help.