Hey, my brother watched my house about a week ago. Just for a couple days. He used my computer. No big deal except he didn’t notice I have Kazaa Lite installed and he went and installed Grokster, which installed a bunch of ad-ware and other crap. I removed 90% of it but two programs remain and can’t be uninstalled, even by Ad-Aware.
Both are integrated into my IE browser now. One is called SideStep and the other is People On Page (POP). Ad-Aware found both, but couldn’t quaranteen or delete them, they aren’t in Add/Remove Programs, there’s no uninstaller, and in Program Files… you can’t even manually delete them because it claims the program is, frighteningly, “in use.”
Barring a wipe/reinstall, any ideas here? Maybe I can delete them if I nuke IE and reinstall that? Or if I discon from the Internet?
Thank you Bleeding Edge. Your link (awesome) told me to use SpyBot, which reinforced what Ranulf was trying to tell me earlier. I’m clean now. It was a program courtesy of IGN. Fuck IGN.
[size=2]And not just because they let Barry Brenesal give an 8.2 for goddam Rise of Nations in a gimmicky dork review…[/size]
That shit is driving me crazy. I got Xupiter and something called memory something/tv-t media recently. Spybot cleared the Xupiter, latest adaware cleared the other.
These people behind stuff installing w/o telling me need to die slow deaths, I mean that. I’d love to find whoever thinks this is a good idea and kick the shit out of them.
The latest Firebird release does look very good. I’m running it right now after seeing Joel Spolsky’s recommendation. None of the usual open source problems so far.
Been using Phoenix/Firebird since 0.2 or 0.3 and haven’t had any major trouble so far. Loads fast and there are some neat extentions out there. As for spyware, I’d also recommend Spybot - Search & Destroy as already mentioned above. As far as I can say it it tends to find more crap than Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware.
Why do people use anti-spyware programs? I just avoid installing crap that comes with spyware programs. Why would anyone need a program to keep unwanted programs off their computer.
Spybot - Search and Destroy is the best such program I’ve seen. I don’t like AdAware, and some of the others are practically spyware in and of themselves…
It sounds like there are dozens of these programs and some people even have their favorites. I can’t believe they have this many programs in existance just to accomodate all the times I’ll loan my computer to my brother. I am just curious.
Tim… download Spybot and run a scan. If you use IE with any security setting that saves cookies and doesn’t constantly complain about not being able to run scripts, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of things you’d prefer weren’t on your computer.
Why do people use anti-virus software? Just avoid downloading anything that has viruses. Why would anyone ever need a program that takes viruses off of their computer?
Why use a seat belt? People should just avoid all collisions. If fact, why do we have EMT’s? People should just avoid getting hurt. Why use…
Yeah, I don’t use virus software either. My experience is if you lock your computer down and don’t do stupid stuff, you don’t need AV. That is just me, though. For example, if I wanted to do file swapping, I would probably have to use AV software or limit my downloads to pictures and mpgs.
My experience with spyware is that I am prompted when the program is being installed so I can just decline. My declining means that I can’t install some programs, like file swapping software for example. To me that has always seemed like a poor reason for installing spyware. I assume others have to have these programs that come with spyware, so the need for these other anti-spyware programs.
Anyhow, I am going to follow Miramon’s suggestion and see if these spyware people have somehow found a way onto my machine without my permission. Thanks Miramon!
