The Red Brick Times

In the past two weeks my computer here at work has twice been infected with some of the most malicious spyware that I've ever seen. It started off with something called Xupiter that, in the background and completely on its own, 1) added a new toolbar to my browser, 2) changed my search and startup pages to itself, 3) created a new folder on my hard drive and installed files there, 4) ran those files at bootup and installed them into memory (which also made them impossible to delete in the normal manner), 5) made it impossible to reset my browser settings back to where they were and, last but not least, 6) sent god knows what information about me back to itself everytime I accessed the internet. I finally got rid of that (I'll show you how) then this morning I booted up, went to tRBT, and got a popup ad that screamed "Your computer isn't safe! Click here!". Now wait a minute. There ain't no popups on tRBT. You guessed it. Another piece of spyware called DownloadDriver (I think) had completed steps 3, 4, 5 and 6 above. Its mission was to generate popups where none should be. Tracking cookies (Gator comes to mind) are bad enough but now it's like you don't own your own computer anymore. May the folks who write this stuff and the site owners who put it on their pages like landmines burn for all eternity! There. I feel better.

So anyway, here's a particular page on a site called "SpywareInfo" that I found to be extremely helpful in dealing with both of the above. It has a link to a free utility called "SpyBot S&D" that worked for me and that I highly recommend. SpywareInfo is a great site. Browse around there to learn more.
Posted 9:52 AM by whatley (0) comments

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