Spyware, popups, etc HELP!!

[I'm Wild Cherry]

Geez... I can't believe I'm getting my 100th post with this. *sigh*

I fell victim to spyware last night and I've been running in circles trying to fix it. I'm getting frustrated because many of the things that I know to do aren't working. I've already read several of the previous postings and am stealing ideas from them.

In mostly chronological order, this is what has happened.

My problem began when I went to a website that changed my homepage and has given me popups. I don't get them with every site that I visit, but 100% of the time when I return to Lit.

I tried the spyware search that is on the Lit homepage. First time, bingo... it gave me information that sadly, I didn't write enough of. I did think to print the following info -

Open add/remove programs in the control panel. Select the my search bar (my search variant), Myway speed bar (myway) or my web search bar (my web) entry and click remove. For the my web variant, be sure to also remove "fun web products easy installer".
You can then reset your home page, etc...

Well, I did go to the control panel. I didn't have anything that was 100% of the text above but did have my search using smiley central. I forgot the exact wording, but figured that was the evil doer. I've removed the smiley central via the add/remove programs. I also reset my home page via the internet options.

After that, I still had popups.

I tried the Lit spyware check again (and again and again) and it keeps saying that there is not a problem.

From cnet, I've downloaded and run adaware and Spybot - search and destroy. Upon running Spybot a second time, it says that there is nothing to remove. There must be *something* - I still have popups! I quarantined everything (7 items) when using Adaware.

I read that someone suggested doing a ctrl+alt+del when encountering the popups. I did that and had the following text in the box : Search your favorite porn - Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Aside from never using Internet Explorer again and smashing the computer with a hammer, can someone please give me some direction?


*pretty please*

 

[CelticFrog]

have you tried searching for updates with both programs? If you've downloaded them from download.com, then you likely haven't gotten THE most recent version (with every single update) which is likely leading to the biggest part of your problem.

Other than that, I am not entirely sure, but will think on it.

Ang

 

[Dionysus2003]

Download the Opera browser so you can surf properly

Then find Norton Utilities, at the Symantec homepage , and see if they can help you.

Another thing can be to use The Cleaner . It has a trojan and spyware detector, plus you can easily control what programs that starts when you start your computer, and edit your register.

 

[I'm Wild Cherry]

have you tried searching for updates with both programs? If you've downloaded them from download.com, then you likely haven't gotten THE most recent version (with every single update) which is likely leading to the biggest part of your problem.

Other than that, I am not entirely sure, but will think on it.

Ang

I got them from cnet.com

Is there a better source?

 

[Bobmi357]

Sounds like you've managed to remove 50% of your problem. Now what I'd do is look for items that are starting up during your system Boot.

Are there any new icons in the system tray?

What about the items in the startup folder? These can be especially insidious since you have a lot of drivers and other hardware that can have entries in the startup folder that people don't normally know about. For example I have several Iomega programs in my system start up that are installed from my zip drive.

I don't know what version of windows you're using, but in windows98 you can add/remove items from the startup folder using START>SETTINGS>Taskbar & Startmenu.

Another thing you might consider getting is Zonealarm from zonelabs.com. This little beauty of a program acts like a net traffic cop. Under its security settings you can effectively prevent any program on your machine from accessing the net. So even if you do have some spyware installed, zonealarm will show you all of the programs that access the net, and you can shut down its access rendering it harmless.

Hope this helps.

 

[quickfoot]

adaware will detect and remove the spyware you mention.

adware has the ability to update its definitions within the program itself, launch adaware and then click "Check for updates now"

Make sure it is lavasoft adaware 6, there are probably older versions available.

Also it sounds like it may be partially uninstalled which may be confusing ad-aware, by default it will only do a partial scan.

You can try doing a full scan by clicking Scan Now and then changing it to Select drive/folders to scan and selecting your c:\ or system drive.

This particular adware is very hard to uninstall through the built in uninstaller and it is intended to be hard

Moving away from Internet Explorer and using Firebird from http://www.mozilla.org will take care of popups and avoid a lot of the Internet Explorer related spyware (lots of spyware likes to install itself as a browser tool bar).

Under XP you can see what programs are being started automatically by going to start, run and typing in msconfig then go to the Startup tab and look for the offending program.

The safest way to handle it is through an spyware removal program such as adaware because you many inadvertantly disable programs that you wanted to start.

Also note that the first time you reboot after running msconfig it will popup an annoying little notice saying we noticed you changed your configuration with msconfig, blah blah blah, you can click the ok button.

 

[I'm Wild Cherry]

Just for clarification...

I'm running Windows 98 and the adaware is version 6.0

You guys have given me lots to try already. I am very thankful for your help! I'll give this a try and hope for the best. Bedtime has actually past. If I'm still suffering from the popup plage, I'll beg for help again tomorrow.

Feel free to post away... I can certainly use the help!

 

[lilpriss]

I'm in pop up hell too!!! It sucks.

Thanks for the suggestions I'm going to give them a shot.

The idea that I'm being tracked pisses me off.

 

[Mary Hall]

I use adaware, a stinger, mcafee, and a firewall, that does help

 

[N8Dreams]

Go to microsoft's site and update your system, you'll find many updates for security there.

In my experience you have to run more than one anti-spyware program. A very fine you'll get at http://www.merijn.org/files/cwshredder.zip
Its fast and free.

For virus protection look at http://www.free-av.de/index.htm,
its free too and got good comments.

There is another thread dealing with the same problem:
https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=7389249#post7389249

 

[Mary Hall]

i HATE spyware, the creators need to die slow painful deaths

 

[I'm Wild Cherry]

I don't know how to explain it...

but...

THEY ARE GONE!!!!

I ran adaware again with a slight variation of what I had done before and poof, they were gone. My homepage was restored and no more damn popups!

Many, many thanks to those of you who offered help.

 

[Dionysus2003]

Congratulations on getting rid of the shit

People who make such things should be rubbed in honey and dropped in a hill containing a billion red ants...

 

[bigpimprob]

off topic./..sorry

I'm Wild Cherry

is that u in your avatar? damn thats a nice body!

 

[N8Dreams]

Im glad you did it