my whole system is fucked! i'll be back when i get this shit taken care of. it has taken me about 15 minutes just to log on and just as long to type this.

ugh!

Porn.

imnotsayinthisjust2bnasty said:

porn is a major factor but not always and you would be surprised how much comes for normal software downloaded off the internet. I have issues with this and security so I try to take the best possible steps when it comes to this shit.

It fucking sucks. Chico is dealing with it now so I should hook him up.

imnotsayinthisjust2bnasty said:

I know how ya feel my computer was all jacked-up a few months ago because of that spyware.

Paisley said:

Porn!

althom said:

althom said:

That's you not me.

actually new, unpatched Windows installs are highly vulnerable. Common to get infected just by running a freshly-formatted drive which hasn't been patched with latest updates from WindowsUpdate.

After you're infected, network activity goes nuts and you have to clean up if you want to do anything on the net.

althom said:

it was actually from downloading music. i get my porn from safe places.

imnotsayinthisjust2bnasty said:

I had all that crap too, from Kazaa, I suspect. I downloaded a freeware program called Spybot, and had it scan my computer for spyware. It detects and deletes all spyware. Just be careful if you use it, as you must immunize IE before you start deleting. If you dowload the program, read the tutorial VERY CAREFULLY before you use it.

McAfee firewall. Once installed, you monitor everything coming in and going out.

Oh yeah, update Windows. I had 10 Critical updates and once installed (with the firewall). All the pop-ups, spyware and everything else stopped.

gemini13 said:

do NOT download spybot! it installs all kinds of little 'extras' on your hard drive that you don't want there! i made this mistake

imnotsayinthisjust2bnasty said:

If you're on Windows, make sure you Start | Run "msconfig" (Startup tab) to get rid of hidden useless programs that launch on startup. You can just uncheck them there and boot up a lot faster thereafter. It's hard to figure out what some of that crap is, but some of it is obvious.

XxAxX said:

i did download spyware and, yeah, it did give me some unwanted extras. the messed up thing was all the stuff spybot deleted came back time and time again. what a pain in the ass. so far, things seem to be back to normal. hopefully the tech lady at dell's help desk solved the issue.

and to think...i was missing valuable org time.

hey, wasn't there an addict thread somewhere?

imnotsayinthisjust2bnasty said:

hey i'm sory you had this experience too. i discovered a trojan on my pc not long after i downloaded spybot and ended up with all this stuff in weirdly named files in my registry. that's the last time i ever download 'freeware'. it wasn't free at all.

alt.comp.freeware (newsgroup)
www.pricelessware.org

Most freeware is great and spyware-free. You just gotta know where to look.