Trav's Blog

OK I was contacted by a friend the other day who was having serious problems with Spyware, Adware, and possibly viruses. Who isn’t these days, right? Well, I’ve never had a huge problem with it. It’s all about browsing smart. Click to read on to view the slightly modifiedObviously I’m not going to give out anyone’s personal information, and I’m not going to put in small talk stuff. Also, I’ve added a few things to it since I’ve had longer to think about it. email I sent him.

OK First order of business: Cleaning out what’s already there.

First off, download Spybot: Search and Destroy. Be sure you have the latest updates and if not, update it first and then run it. In the advanced mode, there are lots of things you can do to protect yourself, like viewing the activex and BHOs (browser helper objects. I use the word helper loosely). You can also immunize your browser against downloading spyware to begin with. Take caution with the advanced mode, however, because if you don’t know what you’re doing you can cause some (usually fixable) problems.
Their website is: http://www.safer-networking.net/en/index.html

You can get the newest version of Ad-aware from download.com or from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ and be sure to update it before you scan. For some reason neither Spybot nor Ad-aware ever get EVERY instance of spyware, but it seems like they work in conjunction with each other well. The new Ad-aware SE has a lot of new features and stronger scanning capabilities, so if you have Ad-aware on your box, this version is worth an upgrade.

Next, there’s Javacool’s Spyware Blaster that prevents spyware from being downloaded. It works like Spybot’s Immunization, only again, neither program gets all of it, so it’s better to run both. This one also helps block the few programs that can get through from Mozilla/Firefox (we’ll get to that in a minute). As with all the others, you want to be sure you update it before you scan.

As far as Adware/Spyware goes, those are the big 3 that are free. There are some other good ones out there, but you usually have to pay for them, and frequently you might download the trial version of one and get a lot of results in the list and think “Well Ad-Aware and Spybot didn’t pick these up, this one must be better.” But be careful. A lot of the trial versions are actually throwing in false positives to persuade you into buying their software. Quite a nasty trick.

Update your virus definitions in Norton or whatever virus protection you’re using (You are using virus protection aren’t you? If not, you most definitely should be) and scan with it after everything is done. As far as free antivirus programs go, I’d recommend Avast! Antivirus. You can get it from download.com or http://www.avast.com/

I’d also recommend using Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird for browsing and email. They’ve both come a long way, and the only time I use Internet Explorer anymore is for Windows Update. Firefox is a lot more lightweight than IE and it doesn’t have the giant security holes that IE does. Thunderbird, as well, doesn’t have all the security holes in it, so most email viruses won’t get installed with it. The interfaces for both are pretty straight forward, but you may or may not like them. I’d suggest at least trying them to see what you think.
I was converted the first time I used Mozilla Phoenix 0.1(which was renamed to Firebird, which was renamed to Firefox).You can get them here: http://www.mozilla.org/

If you don’t use Firefox for browsing, please, for the love of God, install Windows XP Service Pack 2 (assuming you use Windows XP). The new enhancements to Internet Explorer make it a lot more secure, with popup blocking, auto-download blocking (which blocks one technique of installing spyware), and script blocking. It also gives you control over your BHOs. If you don’t use Windows XP, and you insist on using IE, then download the Google Toolbar, which if you tell it not to enable the advanced features, will not act as spyware by anyone’s definition. The Google toolbar will help out with blocking popups, so you don’t accidentaly click “Yes, I do want a bigger penis, a cheaper house payment, and a free credit check all at the same time!!”

If you still decide to use Outlook or Outlook Express, I strongly suggest disabling the preview pane, so that you can delete suspicious email before it loads.

See, it’s a lot easier to just use Firefox and Thunderbird.

Of course, doing all that will not keep you spyware/adware free. When you download something, check to make sure that you aren’t getting something that happens to be packaged with spyware. The EULA should tell you if you are getting more than you wanted. Here are things to make sure you don’t get:
Weather Bug (which I think has gone away from Adware, but still causes a lot of problems
Bonzi Buddy
Gator/GAIN
Bargain Buddy
Almost any search bar except the big ones like Google, Yahoo! (which also has spyware PROTECTION. If I used yahoo.com I’d definitely use this), etc.
Basically anything with any of the following words: “bargain, buddy, coupon, deal, SearchBar”

Lets see, last, I’d suggest running scandisk (or chkdsk, whatever it is now) about once a week, and defragmenting the hard drive about once a month. That will keep your computer a little faster as well. If you have Norton System Works, the SpeedDisk program is really good for defragmenting, but if not, the built in defragger will suffice. Update all the Spyware, Adware, and Virus removal and protection programs about once every 2 weeks and do a scan with them after the update. And clean out your temporary files and temporary internet files fairly regularly. That’s about it for your crash course in tuning up your computer.