spy ware

As a lot of you know there is a lot of stuff that seems to want to wreck havoc with your computer. I just had a friend get his first computer and in less then 2 weeks he was shut down. Not by a virus but from a really bad case of spyware overload. Slowed his computer down so far that he couldn't even get on the internet to access his virus protection, not that that would have done him any good.
We got him up and running again but I told him to download a little freeware called ad aware. Go to Google and bring it up and install. I'm sure that there is a lot of freeware available but i have had very good results with this.
If you notice a slowing down on your computer and don't know why this might just be the reason.
Dennis

For me A.A. is a must-have addition to my computer. It's simple to use and it's FREE.

Load it, use it, pass the word.

BIgs

" What constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language. For there is but one problem - the problem of human relations."

Either one will do a good job. But both, now two free programs, that is a real bargain.

I noticed that neither Ad-Aware nor Spy-Bot seemed to find everything the other found. So having both is a good plan. HOWEVER, my computer still seems to diminish in "resources" over a typical use period, even though no spyware shows up in subsequent scans. Re booting raises the level back to 86%. After being on the net, Adaware runs very slowly, but speeds right up after a reboot. FWIW.

SK

There are also several freeware programs out there that will clean your computer of cookies and space-robbing temp files that collect as you surf and can slow your machine down.

Here's a Microsoft article that explains this mess pretty well for those of us who don't savvy computer-speak very well:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/articles/spyware.asp

False, and true, respectively.

Cookies are not software. They are small files that contain bits of information that a website can use to maintain continuity of experience. (The basic paradigm of the WWW is that the browser askes for a file, the server sends it and the interaction process ceases to exist. It's like have a conversation where one guy says "How ya doin'?" and the other guy says "Fine." and the conversation ceases to exist.)

A bit of information (like the last page you were on or a couple of variables about the point in an interaction, or more to the point, the contents of your shopping cart) stored on the local hard disk allows the browser to pass some context for the request for a page to the server and the server to respond more intelligently.

How a cookie is used depends upon the design of the website, but many useful aspects of the web are enabled by cookies. A cookie only knows what you (the web designer) tells it to know and usually that is only about the user's experience at a specific website.

Spyware, on the other hand is code embedded in or attached to an ad that actively runs in the background while you browse, tracking your keystrokes, your browsing activity and reporting back to some address with information about where you went and what passwords you used to get there.

Spyware => Bad
Cookies => Inert

That's not to say a given cookie might not contain some information you might not want released, but it is to say that a cookie file is not a piece of software and you don't need to shoot them all on sight.

Cy.

I've used both AdAware and Spybot. If both are kept updated, I find that both work fairly well. Spybot picks up some stuff that AdAware doesn't and vice versa, so running both isn't a bad idea. I think AdAware is a bit easier to use, for what that's worth.

Some stuff is really, really hard to get rid of. One two occasions I've actually had to go into a Windows partition from Linux to delete some stuff. Occasionally, you have to booth up in "Safe" mode on windows in order to get rid of certain stuff. Programs like Gator and similar nonsense are designed to make it really hard to get rid of them. Often, even when they say they are gone, they really aren't.

It's a problem that certainly needs addressing.

>Spyware => Bad
>Cookies => Inert
>
>That's not to say a given cookie might not contain some
>information you might not want released, but it is to say
>that a cookie file is not a piece of software and you don't
>need to shoot them all on sight.
>
>Cy.

Better safe, as it were, than sorry.

Cy.

Software is executable code that does something when run by the computer's processor.

Spyware is a form of software that 'spies' upon the user's (you) keystrokes.

Cookies do things like keep you logged in to a site, or remember your username/password for you--reasonably valuable functions. Actually, the cookies themselves do nothing. It's the code on the server that sent them that does those things.

If you are sufficiently vague on how all of this works, the distinction I'm trying to make is worthless. To some people it's all just "the computer" and everything that is inside is just 'the software". If that applies to anyone reading this, disregard all I've said.

You can lead a cat to kibbles, but....

Cy.

For those grok, I leave my browsers set to only store cookies that return information to the site where they came from. And I run a Mac, where most (if any) of the spyware won't run, anyway. Hint. Hint.