Spyware

[WhiteSail]

I have been having a purge recently, trying to locate and remove spyware from my computer.

A program that was recommended to me, was called Ad-aware, has been finding these things with regular monotony, and you should be aware, each time you visit PPrune, a cookie called "valueclick" is loaded on your machine.

This is coming up as a spyware cookie (according to Ad-aware).

It is probably harmless, so you shouldn't go into a blind panic and it is probably nothing to do with PPrue directly. More likely to be a result of one of the advertisments on the BB, and lets face it, in order to survive, Danny and Co needs advertising.

But it does go to show, regular monitoring of what you are receiving can pay dividends!

Incidentally, my machine has both firewall and anti-virus software, but as this is a cookie, it by-passes those safeguards! :eek:

[Hamrah]

Whitesail,

I've invested in Zone Alarm PRO to act as a firewall (bloody good it is too), and it came with a free Internet cleanup program, which detected 3 different "spyware" programs, all acquired through banner ads.

It disabled all three. So I would back up your advice for people to be aware of this stuff, and take preventative action.

H

[Julian]

What is it that these spyware programs get upto? :confused:

Julian

[Evo7]

Julian

Take a look at http://grc.com/optout.htm

Much more info can be obtained from:
http://www.google.com/search?q=spyware

[Julian]

Bl**dy hell - you learn something ever day!
Probably all this spyware that slowing my machine down...

Thanks for the info anyway.

I did MS tried something like that with an early demo disk of Windows, apparently it looked at what MS products you didnt have and sent you junk mail on them. Apparently it also looked for 'dodgy' copies of MS software on your machine. MS were found out and slapped!!!

For those in the UK with BSkyB (I dont!), I hear that the box is connected to the phone line. It supposedly calls BSkyB on a freephone number late at night and lets them know what your viewing habits are, presumably for the purpose of mailshots, etc again. Better cancel the Playboy Channel..... :D :D :D

Julian.

[roach]

I know you are joking about the phone call to Sky but seriously they don't need the phone. Everything you watch is monitored by the satellite. I once asked for an upgrade to a channel and told them my phone line was not connect, no problem was the reply, we do it all trough the sat. 10 mins later I have access to the new channel.....scary!!

[Avtrician]

If you open a cookie with a text editor like notepad, you will find a web address in there that the cookie reports back to. This can be changed to a nonexistant site like www.me.com. (http://www.me.com.) , the cookie then cannot send any info home. Some sites look for their own cookie, and if its there they are happy and think reports will be forth coming, if not there a new cookie is sent.

The moral is edit the cookies to send nothing, but it can take a long time and will be on going, or use add aware and remove them on startup. :p

[sanjosebaz]

Roach: The sat is not duplex! They can send updates to your box ('cos they know its id) but there's no way that the sat can receive anything from your dish - think about the technology required for you to be able to tx to a sat.... :eek:

Also, Sky do not use a freephone number - calls are charged at local rate and they are fairly frequent (but short) - it is (supposedly) just for pay-per-view billing, but the frequency of the calls leads one to suspect that they are indeed monitoring channel activity too.

[ 22 November 2001: Message edited by: sanjosebaz ]

[Julian]

Roach/SanJose - Wish I was joking about Sky. I remember reading an article on it a bit back (Cant remember where!). If there is a call chartge its even worse!

Oh well, glas I stuck with terrestrial TV :o)

Julian.

[brockenspectre]

To kill cookies, about once a week (or when I remember) I go to my c:\windows temp and temp internet files sub folders and delete all the contents. If you just do a regular start-settings-control panel-internet options and delete there the cookies remain in the folders.

HTH (hope this helps)

:D

[henry crun]

brokenspectre: about once a week I go
start/programs/accessories/system tools/disk cleanup/ then select and delete all the temporary internet files.

Is the end result the same as the method you suggest ?

[pax anglia]

I followed Evo7's suggestion and did a search on Google for 'Spyware'.The extent of the problem is quite astonishing with many lists of known or suspected Spyware available for inspection.What surprises me is the fact that software publishers keep churning out the stuff.They must surely accept the fact that they will be rumbled sooner or later and given the speed of the 'net it is likely to be sooner!
Fellow PPRuNers,if you haven't had a look at the estimable Steve Gibson's site,please do so.Well worth a look. (www.grc.com)

[ 25 November 2001: Message edited by: pax anglia ]

[Lurk R]

Due to my porn-surfing habits I usually clean out the history ,temp internet files and cookies after surfing sessions just to be on the safe side!!! There is a program called Tweak (or something like that) which is a general utilities program. It has a tab called Paranoia which allows you to select options of doing what I described above automatically whenever you shutdown the browser... :D

[What_does_this_button_do?]

TWEAK is standard on ME and 2000.

[ICURA?]

For anyone worried about Cookies I use a great program from Kookaburra Software. It's called Cookie Pal and can be downloaded from their web site at ....WWW.Kburra.com

It lets you manage all cookies by giving you the options when receiving a cookie of either
Accepting , rejecting , always accept, or always reject. Of course you can also edit these decisions at any time. I give this program a 10 out of 10 and would not be without it. :cool:

[Blacksheep]

Not all cookies are harmful and if you delete them you lose their benefits. (Such as auto log-in to PPRuNe for example) The harmful ones are mostly picked up by Ad-aware and other programs but even they miss some. The advice of opening them in a text editor is good - I've found some that contain my own e-mail address that are obviously not welcome in my P.C. I too have noticed spyware coming in from PPRuNe but although Ad-aware snags it as spyware it seems to be innocent enough.

I'm still stuck with some files in my cookies folder that cannot be deleted that are left over from an e-mail attack made against me by some wierdo p*ssed off about me detecting and deleting the spoofing file that he had created on my hard drive. Although they look like cookies, they are obviously something else that got through my firewall in disguise. Any tips on what they might really be is very welcome - I'd like to get rid of them as they seem to be responsible for a lot of boring spam.

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Through difficulties to the cinema