Ok you AREN'T supposed to do it but hey, i'm only human and guilty guilty guilty of surfing the net at work!
Herein lies the problem, I started noticing all thse popup ads when I boot up. I checked the pc using adaware and spybot and deleted what it brought up. Then i went to windows add/remove programs and found some supsicious file names (altho it's really difficult to even tell what half of those on the list ARE), looked them up on a google and found some to be spyware. Every so often I seem to fix the problem but then it's back again in force.
Well crap! How do I keep this stuff from downloading on the pc at work? I mean i surf more at home than I do there, but for some reason I do not have any problems at home with a bunch of spyware and adwares downloading onto my pc. I really can't be downloading software at work to protect the pc. I just can't figure out why it seems more susceptable to all these ads and programs downloading. I sure don't want anything unsavory downloading without my knowing. once in awhile i see in my internet favorites a "new" favorite for adults only so I quickly delete it and once again run my spybots.
These companies really p**s me off by creeping stuff onto your pc, it's getting to the point where i'm either going to have to stop surfing all together (which i dont' do all that frequently anyways but once in awhile i'm searching for a funny gif or a joke to quickly send someone) or i'm going to have to reformat that hard drive if i could convince our techy person. Since it's the company's pc I don't feel comfortable about changing settings or modifying the registry and all that.
Anyone else have this problem?
My experience is that most of this stuff comes from the avalanche of pop-ups you get when surfing, you try to close them and they actually load stuff on the computer. Believe me, I have had to clean up a bunch of them on the computers at work.
Problem is there is not a good pop-up blocker for Internet Exploder, so I don't use it for surfing, only for our web apps at work that won't work with anything else. I use Mozilla Firefox which has a popup blocker which is turned on by default.
I got my brother to finally start using it and he was bragging to me one day that he had got any new adware since he started using it . I've seen adware pretty much make a computer unusable. Now they have them popping up when you aren't even using the web browser.
If you can, get Firefox. It also has the neat tabbed browsing feature. You can open links in a tab within the same browser window instead of opening a whole new window. You can be posting on multiple forums at the same time and only have one window open. It will also import your IE favorites into it's bookmark folder.
Linux for most computer work
Firefox for browsing on either OS
I use the Pop-Up Stopper Free Edition by Panicware and let me tell ya, I've tried about 5 or 6 different pop up stoppers and this is by far the best one out there in my honest opinion.
It's super simple to use and blocks about 95 % of all pop ups.
Occaisionally one or two might get through but it's rare.
(http://www.panicware.com/images/productimages/IMGXAPopUpFreeMenu.gif)
Get it here (http://www.panicware.com/product_psfree.html)
Easy solution: download Opera.
Susan, you allready did good using Spybot and Addaware but to be save of PoP Ups there is only one real permanent solution...
Do not surf! ;)
To minimize the risk all you can do is either download opera like twsmith suggested (since most pop up scripts and programs rely on the known browsers like IE and Netscape) or try mozilla wich is much more popular then opera these day´s since it is more compatible...
Also (if your boss allows it) get yourself some firewall and most important of all AntiVirus Software!
If you have a Firewall/AntiVirus Program alongside a "non-standard" browser and on top of all AddAware and Spybot you should be okay in the future...
Trust me, I know... It is my Job ;)
Oh and by the way, I browse from work as well ^_^ And fix the Machines that colleagues use to browse with and (like you) got struck by Pop´s and Viruses :D
Hard job, but someone has to do it *g*
Edit: Just checked out the Programm Ashcat was advertising.... looks okay... allthough it did miss out on a few pop´s on my Laptop allready, but non critical ones ;) All my test pop´s with scripts it killed quite nicely, so... use that program as well if you like... it works :)
Post Edited (07-21-04 04:02)
Yeah, Popup Stopper is not perfect, but it reduces the problem significantly. Between it, PC Cillin, Spybot and Adaware (like to use em both), I have virtually no problems with spam, spyware, viruses, hijacks or popups.
That's at home. At my office, it's all Macintosh. That solves most of these problems on its own. People rarely write this crap to work on a Mac. Not worth the effort.
Post Edited (07-21-04 07:52)
QuoteThat solves most of these problems on its own. People rarely write this crap to work on a Mac.
That´s right... they mainly do it for Windows machines... since:
#1 Most PC´s worldwide run Windows
#2 Many Crackers want to p**s off Bill Gates
Annother important reason for the existance of so many exploit-viruses is that Microsoft allways keeps "Backdoors" open for themselves! As soon as these backdoors get known to crackers they write Viruses for it to force Microsoft to close these backdoors they kept open for themselves...
Microsoft... causing troubles we never even dreamed of... as they allways have! :p
Firefox is the browser only version of what I use - Mozilla. I have not seen a popup in years.
http://www.mozilla.org
Plus, when an exploit was found the other day (caused by Windows actually), the Mozilla team had it fixed in 24 hours. We're still waiting for any number of Internet Explorer security holes to be fixed. Some are months old.
Susan, the best way is to stop surfing porn sites (hey, somebody had to say it ).
You'll probably need two or three different pop up ad scrubbers, they can edit the registry and really mess up your system (go with what others have recommended.) Worst case scenario is a reformat & reinstall, which is an all day project for me but it gets rid of accumulated crap.
As others have mentioned, IE is horrible for getting hacked by pop up ads. Usually I use Mozilla, or Opera, and only use IE when a website -- that I need to go to -- is designed for IE (if I don't need to visit an IE designed website, I don't go there; it is p**s poor designing.) Then I make sure to set the settings to deny pop ups.
Well an update - apparently i had our tech guy look at it and it was just loaded with crap in my temp file that the system wouldn't let me delete unless i was in safe mode. Once deleted, IE didn't work. So he had to tinker with the registry and rerun the spybot and adaware stuff, clean it with the virus checker..uncheck stuff from the startup. Because alot of stuff deleted i deleted the other day and somehow it resurfaced on my pc. I use POW popup killer at work, mostly because i use it at home and i can pick what it kills. maybe at work i need something that will kill everything.Our networking guy something about the computers being on a network or something makes you more vulnerable.
I was b***hing that i do more surfing at home at all kinds of weird sites and NEVER have spyware on my computer. i clean the one at work daily with spybot and adaware but they could not get rid of nor even catch half the crap i had on my PC. It accumulated and just got to the point that ads were constantly on my screen. It's kind of embarassing when you see th supervisor coming in the rear view mirror and an ad with a woman laying down pops up saying "SINGLE? FIND ROMANCE" I'm thinking "holy god no..just let me be able to close this window in time!"
Don't tell me not to surf at work, that's like telling me not to breathe! I can't download another browser other than what is on the PC. i don't want to be the jackass on the corporate memo who unleashed the mighty virus from hell that has virtually shut down the company for days (like last years incident with a guy and his laptop) because i ran an exe file that i shouldn't have. It's amazing that a giant corporation does run programs with so many exploits.
We have a virus scanner but it doesn't scan realtime, you have to set it to scan upon bootup or something. Crazy. I can't go downloading any other virus scanners, that's a no-no
Btw i don't surf porn sites..lol I'm scared enuff to surf at all unless they are somewhat familiar sites since i know the dangers of 're-routing'. Tho there was some "adult" on my system at work, an ad or something that adware picked up. The tech guy says when removing all the crap from people's computers that's the kind of stuff that's on them. You have no idea it's there, you never went to any adult site, that's scary because it makes it look like you have. Altho my computer had stuff that was harder to remove, a coworker of mine ran adaware and it found over 300 things that they had to sit and delete one by one, alot of porn and i'm like "what the hell have YOU been doing on your lunch break?!" lol
it makes me want to really see the creators of these adwares in prison FOR LIFE!!
Exactly how is creating these adwares legal??
Post Edited (07-21-04 19:46)
I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but I do very little to protect myself while surfing and I don't seem to have these problems. I have no firewall, no real-time virus scanner and I use Explorer. I've only had my homepage hijacked once and so far have never had a virus. Of course I'm on dialup, so my system isn't quite as attractive to hackers as a nice broadband system.
I set Explorer to prompt before running any ActiveX content or scripts (it's amazing how something like 98% of the sites on the net use ActiveX) and I have a popup stopper called PopDown, which completely prevents new Explorer windows from opening unless you disable it or hold down the CTRL key.
When I ran AdAware after not paying any attention to such things, it found something like 300 items, BUT, they were all cookies. It found no adware programs at all.
I did have something like 3000 cookies, most of which I deleted, then I installed Cookie Wall, which prompts when it detects a new cookie and can be set to automatically delete that cookie should it show up again. Right now I have 771 cookies on the auto-delete list and 9190 automatic kills.
I scan downloaded files with an on-demand virus scanner.
Also, I have GetRight, a download manager/accelerator installed, which is set to monitor for EXE files and take over the download from Explorer. Occasionally, this will pop up out of the blue on a site and ask if I want to download something like plugin.exe. I assume if GetRight wasn't there to intercept it, it would be sent to Explorer to run.
Susan, setting Explorer's security level to high may help stop some of this stuff from getting on the system. Also, check out the help/tips forum on Freedomlist (http://www.freedomlist.com). They're pretty gung-ho on getting rid of adware/spyware. In fact, members of the AdAware team read the forums there and will help diagnose an AdAware log file.
Of course cutting down on the porn sites would probably help too. :)
>>I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but I do very little to protect myself while surfing and I don't seem to have these problems. <<
john you totally contradicted yourself. You have changed your settings, use adaware, use popdown, have a cookie wall, have getright...lol That's more than some do and you have taken protective measures.
There's some scary stuff out there. Some programs come with an uninstall that directs you to a website and actually installs more crap on your computer. Alot of stuff i noticed adaware or spybot or my virus checker did not recognize as adware or spyware - i had to manually research these files on google to find out they were. I plan on adjusting the active X settings tomorrow, I was looking at them today but i had to get back to work and quit fooling with the PC. I'm wondering if it will affect how I use the intranet at work, which I do regularly as a part of my job
At home for virus i use norton..i hate it. It's to massive. I miss my ontrack system suite. As for a firewall I use My Tiny personal Firewall. ;-) I had a very bad bad baaaaaad experience years ago when using ZoneAlarm. It was so huge I decided i wanted to use something else, too many conflicts. After uninstalling that thing hijacked my freaking computer and it took me 3 days to get the computer RUNNING. Then i had to figure out how to remove every single file associated with it. Evil comes in many forms.
Post Edited (07-21-04 23:06)
>john you totally contradicted yourself. You have changed your settings, use
>adaware, use popdown, have a cookie wall, have getright...lol That's more than
>some do and you have taken protective measures.
I suppose, but I don't have a firewall, don't have a virus scanner running in the background, hardly ever run AdAware, have never run Spybot, etc.
>I plan on adjusting the active X settings tomorrow, I was looking at them today
>but i had to get back to work and quit fooling with the PC. I'm wondering if it will
>affect how I use the intranet at work, which I do regularly as a part of my job
Well, probably 90% of sites you visit try to use ActiveX, but I'd estimate that probably only 10% of those sites actually need it to function. It can even be triggered by banner ads apparently, as a few times, I've gotten the ActiveX prompt on this site. If you want to watch any kind of streaming video, you'll almost certainly have to answer Yes to the ActiveX and scripts prompts. It also seems to come up for Flash content as well. If you don't let them run for streaming video, you usually end up with the display area (where the video would play) blank and the site just sitting there. If you deny it on a page that relies on Flash, the page usually comes up blank.
The annoying part is that most pages will stop loading until you click Yes or No. So you click a link, walk away, come back 5 minutes later and find out that the page is there waiting for you to click one of the buttons. Of course after you click No (the default choice), Explorer pops up a message telling you that since you've chosen not to run the ActiveX content, the page may not display correctly, and you have to click the button (or hit Enter). Don't think you can get around it by disabling ActiveX completely either. Explorer won't prompt you, but it will still pop up the message about the page not displaying correctly. I guess that's Microsoft's way of trying to annoy users into accepting ActiveX. When the prompt comes up, I've gotten in the habit of hitting the Enter twice, that cancels both windows.
If the page doesn't work correctly, just reload the page and you'll get the prompt again. If there are pages you visit regularly that require ActiveX, you can add those sites to the trusted security zone so that stuff can be allowed automatically.
Susan, install Spywareblaster on your work p.c.
Here's the description taken from the Help file in the program:
"SpywareBlaster is the original anti-spyware protection solution!
Developed in 2002 to help users prevent spyware installs, SpywareBlaster pioneered the effective use of prevention techniques to reduce or greatly eliminate spyware-related problems, as well as problems related to other unwanted software such as dialers, browser hijackers, and adware.
Today's SpywareBlaster is greatly enhanced - protection is still the foremost purpose of the program, but it also provides unique utilities like the exclusive "System Snapshot", and various useful tools. The interface has been upgraded to provide easier access to all of the new options, including Restricted Sites Protection, and Mozilla/Firefox Protection.
Help keep your system safe and secure with SpywareBlaster. "
Basically it stops websites from installing that garbage on your computer in the first place.
If you do decide to get it, and it is free, check for updates constantly as they're always adding them.
It's also very easy to use and I haven't had any spyware/adware in months since I installed it.
Go get it here (http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html)
Let us know if you decide to get it and how it works out for you.
Post Edited (07-22-04 01:03)
QuoteDon't tell me not to surf at work, that's like telling me not to breathe!
Be carefull nevertheless, Our company just fired quite a few people for too much surfing at work.
QuoteI can't download another browser other than what is on the PC. i don't want to be the jackass on the corporate memo who unleashed the mighty virus from hell that has virtually shut down the company for days (like last years incident with a guy and his laptop) because i ran an exe file that i shouldn't have. It's amazing that a giant corporation does run programs with so many exploits.
You should Install that new browser! Either Mozilla or Opera... And it WON´T Bring down your company ;) Viruses do that, not Browsersoftware!