PC security (ie anti spyware programs
http://www.ewido.net/en/
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

http://www.opera.com/download/ safer better surfing
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta2.html safer better email  

--Last edited by alex on 2007-06-27 15:00:27 --

Alex,

I ran that ewido thingy and it tells me I have a load of stuff on my PC! I'm a bit of a luddite really and don't really know what all this spyware, adware etc is about, and I'm wary to let ewido delete the files it said were a problem in case it does something nasty to my PC. If you have the time, can you set my mind at rest, that letting ewido delete these things isn't going to screw up my PC?

Sorry for being such a non-techie!

Cheers,

Martyn

Im a non-techie too, Paul is our resident IT master.
All I have learnt about PCs has come from reading about it in IT forums similar to this one and from articles on sites like pcstats.com,
http://www.beginnerspc.com/articles.cfm
or whatever.

The Ewido help files, or website would certainly be a useful resource.

These programs search from all sorts of stuff in various ranges of danger, from cookies that will tailor ads to send you when you surf the web to full-on worms and things that are designed to turn control of your system to someone else or keyloggers that record all your typing input inorder to rip off you bank account or similar.

You should be able to see what threat level each item has and access them from there.

It should also say what program these files were associated with,  so if it says that it found spyware in Adobe, or microsoft or some program you are aware of and trust then you can be fairly safe in agnoring it AFAIK.

If the computer you are using is your home machinethen chances are you should be fine IMHO to delete or quarantine whatever a check like this uncovers.if your kids are better at this stuff let them do it.
Some programs may be misdiagnosed by a scan, but I can't think of any.

Some programs that you get for free under licence may be legally entitled to use adware on your machine. Smiley central software was like this, the EULA says it pays for the software by sending you ads and getting money from the advertisers to make the program free ( I thinkthat is what the program I am thinking of was),  I tried it anyway loved having all the smilies but started getting hit with ads all the time that would chew up my bandwidth and system resources, fight with my other security setting and slow everything down (or so it was percieved by me). Ewido got rid of it.

If you are talking about a work computer get someone to fix it up,

You could ask the advice of an IT forum somewhere, I can't think of any relavent off the top of my head, but they should be everywhere, just seaarch for it.


My advice is let the program do its thing after spending a few minutes reading a bit more about the topic in the help menu or the websites frequently asked questions list.
I would expect any software on your machine should have an installation disk lying around somewhere, so if something goes wrong you can reinstall stuff, but I haven't heard of this being needed.

PS thanks for expanding my vocab!

Lud·dite     P   Pronunciation Key  (ldt)
n.
Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
One who opposes technical or technological change

Didn't you ever hear Ruddick getting called a Luddite when he was trying to bring in internet filters for the whole country?

This stuff is a lot of work. And it's hard to explain in a lot of cases. I typically use two programs to scan to adware junk: adaware and spybot. Keep them up to date and run from time to time. Never had any problems deleting anything they highlight. Bare in mind not everything they find are always bad. And some programs may stop working because they require the adware (to get paid!).

Spybot comes with some immunisation stuff which is good to run too. Viruses are something very different from this. As are firewalls.

Seems most people use adware and spybot, I did for a while and then tried Microsoft antispyware and ewido and they found things the others missed, but then again I DL alot of stuff and that is fairly risky as far as things go.

BUMP 4 greg