Seeing that we have talked about viruses. There is something just as bad that runs on many pc's with out the owner even knowing.
Everyone should run a program called adawre on their pc! Seeing that I use yahoo games etc..... I have my security settings set to ignore adclick script and so i never have any invisible scripts running on my pc. I was upset to find yahoo allows adclick but i like yahoo chess and pool games. So I still go there. I protest myself 1st by setting security to ignore adclick script. Besides adclick from yahoo, I don't go any where with threat. But I still run adaware to get one once in a while. Just to check. You never know. People have them more than they know!
Adaware finds and cleans them and it is free. Found at download.com, adaware finds what is invisible, and u can't find in a folder or Ctrl/alt/delete menu or anywhere on your pc. They are truely invisible and so all should run adaware free version and get rid of what they don't know is there. porn sites, and other sites use these tags to send back info on where u surf and your private info. Run adaware to clear your mind if anything. easy to install and use! great program!
Run adaware and feel piece of mind.
You may thank me later!
My buddy had 54 of them running on his pc. And he knew his pc was getting slower and slower. Till I told him to run adaware and his eyes were widened greatly! he was able to click on romove all and they were gone.
Tony

Hi Tony,
Although I've had a pc for some 3 years now I'm not a great user apart from emailing, visiting this site (and the other one) and downloading music from Wnmix - so I'm no expert on the thing. However over the years on advice I've down loaded so many programmes (mostly for free) which are supposed to do good things, to the point where I sometimes wonder if the computer will burst! Justg a few of the progs are Winzip, Download Accelerator plus, Gozilla, Agrisoft (AVG) and Zone Alarm, and various Windows "critical updates." Before I take you advice to take on yet another one, I'd like to see a few comments from other folks about this adaware - or is it adawre?
Anyone out there like to oblige?

Peter

Adaware is a "spyware" finder and remower, and that spyware is mostly "cookies" set on your PC and is to find in temporary internet cache folder.
Most of those cookies is "kind" progs who recall what adverts you could see when visiting a site and try to adjust the advertflow in the direction that suit the type of sites you visit, and try to avoid adverts who are not in your interest.
Others remember your settings at a site 'till the next time you visit etc.

I don't have paranoia because of it, just keeping in mind where to visit or not, and as long as the conscience is clean, there is nothing much to be afraid of.
"Big Brother" know all that there is worth knowing about me anyway, regardless of if I like it or not, so what more is there to spy at??
GJ

I can surely understand concern about program recommendations. I too have tried many useless and harmful one. Concern about one only leads me to go to download.com and read user opinions! There you will find it has all good ones and no thumbs down. Last I checked. If it has a high rating you can trust it and if people give bad comments its something you should think about. Download.com has user ratings so only stuff that grows a great reputation can truly be ok for sure. Look for your advice at download.com search for key word adaware.

To add further.There is a tell tale sign that you may have scripts running in the background on your pc. If your pc is working slower and even real slow at times. If you hit ctrl/alt/delete and find not much running and then right click on "my computer" icon and choose properties/ and then click the performance tab. if it says your system resources are lower than they should be and not much running. You could have scripts running. Some people get so many the pc crawls and stalls. My buddy did not take my advice but came back to ask me where to get adaware cuz he ran at less than 46% resources at times. Restart and recheck resources again. This should be above 90 % this time and not mean for sure you need adaware cuz you have them. You then have to open and reclose a few programs you usually and/or just been using. Some programs do not give back all the resources the used when you first opened them. And do or do not take away more each time you reopen and close it. I keep my ctrl/alt/delete window with only 5 things in there and I know what they all are. I also like this because if my pc is grinding having just 48 ram, I hit ctrl/alt+delete so see if there is a 6th one. find the stranger and end task on it. I know what I need to run this. Every install should include a check for it in the ctrl/alt/delete and kept or dumped out of start up or just kept track of as #6. I never had a fire wall, and never been hacked yet. I end task on anything odd, and keep right on a surfin. One has to be very careful and notice if the pc is working extra hard! Harder to tell that by ear if you have 256 or 512 ram, with a fast processer. I could go on and on but, I will wait to see if someone deputes this much. One thing is I do not recommend anything I haven't use for months and Know to be good, with no bugs to hurt your pc. Adaware is the only thing out there anywhere that can find these scripts. You can not find them any other way! period. It is also the only way to clean them out. You can't delete what does not show up in any folder of your pc. Maybe in dos mode, who knows. but me and a few friends were sure glad we used it is all! I know for a fact that someone will come back to this post and say they had a bunch of invisible stuff running and cleaned them all out. I had one friend who only had to start pc and click on anything and more than 10 ads popped up and kept reopening. right off his desk-top. But that was because he was so infected with ads, I found out that his step-son was on the pc a lot on adult sites. He had it bad on his pc. He ran adaware and not one thing was wrong after. I heard he just ran it again.! HA Ha darn that kid.

... but not everyone have those programs containing spyware installed, (fewer and fewer progs because of the publicity around spyware), and as far as I know, there is a list of such progs to read/download somewhere at the web?
Popup windows is very easy to avoid, either set Windows too strenght in security to open most sites at the web, or use a popupstopper software such as Pop-Up Stopper.
But again, personally I don't worry too much, it's pretty much depending of the way we travel around the net, and what kind of progs we have to try out....
GJ

pop up window does not stop info from being sent back to their server without you knowing.

Adaware is a good program to eliminate the spyware. One to watch out for that is especially bad to get rid of is "Gator". It shows a cute alligator hiding behind a fence offering to help you fill in forms on web sites. DON'T DOWNLOAD IT my daughter grabbed it because it was cute and it installed itself several times. The TaskManager revealed over 50% of the PC load was from this beast indexing and reporting back our activities and the popup traffic became atrocious. I finally had to go find each process in the TaskManager list, identify if it was related to Gator and nuke it. Finally we had good response again and relative freedom from popups. I did not have AdAware on the PC at the time but it does find it.

Ron

yes, I had gater also Ron. Although I found 6 of them at once on my PC, Adware got rig of it and it never came back. I didn't install it though. I got it from surfing a site. A few plces have it ready to board your pc from a hidden script of a web page html. Yes kids do install things without asking. That is just gonna happen i guess. Right? ha ha Gator is the most abundant one and most powerful for breaking into and setting itself up on your pc. Gator can be real nasty. My buddy I sopke of twice so far had gator all over his pc. Man! it was in quite a few different folder, When adaware found it that is. But open the folder up that adaware says its in and it is invisible. Without adaware you will never find it, and gator is powerful enough to report back almost every thing you do on your pc. You would be under a watching eye, if you have gator anyone. And next comes the mass flow of email you get. Soon as you change your email if you have gator, it sends the new email right back to gator. It should be illegal for anyone to put gator or any of the other scripts on some one elses pc without asking at least!!! Money talks I guess, and laws change with much delay time when gov. afficials take gifts and money contributions from companies. So gator and others continue to be legal. Isn't that something.

Just seen Sparky's other thread on anti virus stuff and all in all it seems adaware is a "Good Thing" so I'll go find it.

Thanks to all.

Peter

Ad-aware cleaned out 85 snoopers from my hard drive, including Gator and Bearshare that I didn't even know were there. Most of the spyware was connected to five different companies. Wish I had a way of reversing energy to their computers and giving them a little taste of vengence.

well Peter. bud whipple had 85 snoopers. You starting to wonder about your pc yet? hehe

Find 108!! on my primary HD and an older one I used for a slave.
Amazing.
DonM

Okay, Bud found over 50 snoopers, and Don found over 100 of them. I'd like to see more of you run ad-aware and report back here how many snoopers you found on your pc. here is the link to get it. There is a free update for it as well, I just noticed. And the update is rated at 100 % by users. I am going to install update for it and run ad-aware scan of my pc again.
This is something that blows people away. To find a bunch of spy ware on their pc they didn't have a clue even existed.

Opps I forgot the link for ad-aware. here it is. http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=ad-aware&tg=dl-2001&search=+Go%21+
The first 2 listed are the ones to get. Adaware and the update.
Dont forget to report back how many snoopers you found on your pc. If you found any that is. I am sure most will find some.
Tony

Funny, but the only one found here at my PC after deep scan of both HD directories is a cookie from Doubleclick, and that one is very common, and it "only" keep tracks at adverts as far as I know, and according to some PC magazines, it's not a very bad one.....
GJ

Yeah, double click is not very major. Quite minor actually.I had a few of those in the last year. Didn't even notice my pc running slower with it. gaming sites use doubleclick. yahoo has used them as well. no matter how mild they are,,,, They are like a fly bothering me, I can't help but want to zap em. and if i get them again, set security to not allow scripts from there. So then I can go to yahoo games and not get doubleclick again. i like to know that I have NOOOOOOOO spyware, on my pc of any kind. And no installs without me there. Restoration disk is not my favorite thing to do. I try and avoid that. Even if I restore once a year. That is too much for me. Until I get my new pc with a full version of windows which will avoid restoration disk. I make graphics and do web design so I have too much stuff on my pc to restore without a long day of it. ha ha. My huge 6 gig HD! LOL

[This message has been edited by Sparky (edited 06-12-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Sparky (edited 06-12-2002).]

The only thing I tend to find all the time is a double click cookie too, which is not the end of the world. Ordinary cookies are not much of a problem, in fact you need them to prevent having to re-type your password everywhere.

But if you've been running your pc for a long time with no cleanouts, no adaware runs, no internet explorer security tweaking, no firewall tweaking, and no periodic re-installation of windows (even from clean images if not a full install), I suppose it is not that surprising that so many spywares are found. The vast majority are pretty harmless, but I feel that some legislation is required here, because with no controls, the opportunity for abuse is high.

No one has mentioned the fact that microsoft and intel wanted to be able to identify every single computer to its user, presumably to check for software licenses when you go online - and sell the checking information to other companies.

Here the government wants the power to force ISPs to save for ever all details of your internet traffic, the sites you have visited, and copies of all your email, permanently saved on servers for scrutiny by government employees. Talk about a snooper's charter.

Spyware companies are not the only ones we need protection from.......

You certainly make good points here Alec, but I still think it is a lot depending of our selves and the behaviour we show when travel around the web, and if we install about all progs there is to find etc.

Of course it is a good habit to keep the "puter" clean and fresh, but as I said in a post abowe, personally I don't let the paranoia be too heavy, and what is there to know that "Big Brother" don't already know? Not much I guess, even we like it or not...
.... and Microsoft, well, that's really worth look out for, not long before Bill G rules all that there is to rule on this "computer-earth" if they keep on like this!
GJ

Interesting point on microsoft Gunnar Jonny. time released bugs can be put in windows and explorer versions. So then you have to go to windows update so they can reload more time released bugs that get you back for more abuse. Maybe for the newer version and a fresh scan of your HD. LOL Sooner or later you have to go back to miscrosoft.
They are pushing windows XP real hard, considering all the security weakness it has!Just how they like it or what? Lets face it. Bill Gates is in the drivers seat. And he is doing some skillful driving! Question is "where is he trying to drive it"? I guess that is why some people swear by UNIX instead of windows. I have heard some pretty good arguments about UNIX and other web browsers besides Internet Explorer. All just for the sake of not being under Bill Gates control. They say that any person having anything microsoft instead of an alternative is essentially contributing to Bill Gates Power over the world. I suppose they are right to say that but here I am using windows 98 and explorer 6.0. So I am no one to talk, but I was just stating apinion from a group oon the net I ran into the site once.

Well Linux was based on Unix operation, and the only reason Linux took off was anti microsoft feelings...

Maybe my next system won't be windows. Maybe I will like that. But Let's not overlook the fact that at least Bill Gates give more to charity then any man ever. He has a 40 hr. per week team, that decides where to send moneys, 5 days a week. He gives millions away every day. The dollar amount bill gates gives for good causes and crisis is huge. I was glad to at least see that news special on Bill Gates. I thought he didn't give crap away. So I pretty much hated him, for holding billions while people were starving to death. Isn't that why most people hated him? But, if he has a team that goes over and distributes money to over 500 causes a day. I give him that at least, and therefore can't hate the man! I am careful to hate anyone. And I surely will way in the money bill gives. I don't hate Bill Gates. It's not his fault he is a geeeeek.

[This message has been edited by Sparky (edited 06-12-2002).]

Hmmm... I have'nt seen any of that money in my account, rather the oposite, Bill get his part from mine.
That's really something to think about, considering all the time spent to solve quite a lot of MS crashes and bugs during the time using Windows, both for myself and others!
Oh well, life is'nt fair, is it?
GJ

its not that he gives it away - its the fact he's got so much to give away in the first place - all from monopoly practices. So much for the anti-trust laws....
What would people say if one oil company sold 90% of the petrol in the world?

I had 58..

Thanx for posting Fran.there go another 58 spyware rodents. Deleted.

I had 53