How Secure Is Your Computer?

[TheGeneral+]

How secure is your computer? You may want to double check.

A nationwide inspection shows Internet users are not as safe online as they believe. The inspections found most consumers have no firewall protection, outdated antivirus software and dozens of spyware programs secretly running on their computers.

The study from America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance finds 77-percent of those questioned say they're safe from online threats. But when experts visited those same homes to examine computers, they found two-thirds had no protective firewall program and 80-percent had spyware.

Much More

 

[Fishhead]

What is scary is that the government can read IM on AOL

 

[jjgold]

All that stuff is so overrated

No one is secure period


Be smart

 

[TheGeneral+]

Yes, I just downloaded the new "Patriot Act" version of AOL messenger.

 

[newton0038]

My computer currently has an "about blank highjacker"

When you start this ***** up the homepage automaticaly goes to www.a-search.biz or some site like that. Disables my back button at time aswell, real pain in the ass and my tech guy said it needs to be leaned. He must be right cause every time I run Ad-Aware it finds in the neighborhood of 1200 infections on the system

 

[FairWarning]

Newton:

Download this free http://www.webroot.com/land/land-spysweeper6_6.php?rc=576 It is Spysweeper and works much better than ad-aware. I recommend the pay version (on sale for 19.99 vs 29.99). I have never had a problem after installing this. Let me know if you have any problems.

 

[1cheater]

Shouldn't this stuff be in the Tech/geek room? OH wait, look's like that area is gone :think:

 

[TheGeneral+]

Dell support told me a week ago that adaware was a bad 3rd party software and it is not advised to use?

 

[Fishhead]

Dell support told me a week ago that adaware was a bad 3rd party software and it is not advised to use?

Since i ousted that software from my PC, it has been working like a gem.

I dont have ONE bit of spyware or anything and my PC is running better than ever.

 

[SportSavant]

I dont have ONE bit of spyware or anything

what r u using for spyware?

 

[1cheater]

General, if you don't know what your doing with Adaware you can completely fawk up your computer and be forced to reformat.

 

[brewers7]

newton0038:

My handicapping buddy had the same problem a few days back..It took me over 2 hours of trial and error on the phone with him to kill it, but the actual solution will take less than 5 minutes, closer to 2 or 3 minutes, since I got lucky and found a way to get rid of it (was reading online forums while tinkering)...

You have a trojan, and it has hijacked your home page and is creating havoc with your pop-up windows...You probably cannot even login to your yahoo account if you have one...

Here is the fix:

1) Open Windows Explorer (windows key + "E" key) & Go to:
Tools / Folder Options.

Click on the "View" tab,

and make sure that "Show hidden files and folders" is checked.

Also uncheck "Hide protected operating system files", and don't worry about any warnings, just click "Yes" if you see a warning.

Now click "Apply to all folders", then “OK”.

Next, please boot up into "safe mode" (or Start/Turn off computer/Restart if you have Windows XP)

If you don't know how to get into "safe mode", simply shut down, reboot, and right when your pc is booting up, hit "F8" to get into safe mode...

Once in safe mode,

Go into Windows Explorer once again, and

delete the entire contents of the "C:\Windows\Temp" folder, but not the folder itself.

In other words, on the left, left-click to highlight the fold named "Temp", then

Look to the right and you want to delete everything you see in the right side of the screen...

Do NOT delete the "Temp" folder, simply delete EVERYTHING that is in it...

Once that is done, you can reboot,




your pc will automatically go into normal mode and you might be just fine (at least my friend was)...

Before you do this, I would recommend:

1) Go to windows Update on your start menu and download all of the necessary Microsoft updates
2) Run a virus scan on your pc
3) go to webroot.com and download the free trial version of Spy Sweeper and run that once...

Iposted this "fix" at another forum and it worked for someone else, too...Hope it works for you...

GL...

brewers7

 

[TheGeneral+]

General, if you don't know what your doing with Adaware you can completely fawk up your computer and be forced to reformat.

Consider it gone.

 

[1cheater]

General, where did all that information that was tirelessly gathered go that was in the Tech/PC help room?


I understand that area may not have had the traffic TheRX expects, is there a chance it will come back and replace that busy Fantasy section?

 

[Fishhead]

what r u using for spyware?

No clue..........I am a computor idiot.

 

[TheGeneral+]

Cheater, I merged them all into the RR.

 

[1cheater]

General, try Spybot, it's much more user friendly, i've had it for 3 years now and have never had a problem.

 

[MadCapper]

newton0038:

My handicapping buddy had the same problem a few days back..It took me over 2 hours of trial and error on the phone with him to kill it, but the actual solution will take less than 5 minutes, closer to 2 or 3 minutes, since I got lucky and found a way to get rid of it (was reading online forums while tinkering)...

You have a trojan, and it has hijacked your home page and is creating havoc with your pop-up windows...You probably cannot even login to your yahoo account if you have one...

Here is the fix:

1) Open Windows Explorer (windows key + "E" key) & Go to:
Tools / Folder Options.

Click on the "View" tab,

and make sure that "Show hidden files and folders" is checked.

Also uncheck "Hide protected operating system files", and don't worry about any warnings, just click "Yes" if you see a warning.

Now click "Apply to all folders", then “OK”.

Next, please boot up into "safe mode" (or Start/Turn off computer/Restart if you have Windows XP)

If you don't know how to get into "safe mode", simply shut down, reboot, and right when your pc is booting up, hit "F8" to get into safe mode...

Once in safe mode,

Go into Windows Explorer once again, and

delete the entire contents of the "C:\Windows\Temp" folder, but not the folder itself.

In other words, on the left, left-click to highlight the fold named "Temp", then

Look to the right and you want to delete everything you see in the right side of the screen...

Do NOT delete the "Temp" folder, simply delete EVERYTHING that is in it...

Once that is done, you can reboot,




your pc will automatically go into normal mode and you might be just fine (at least my friend was)...

Before you do this, I would recommend:

1) Go to windows Update on your start menu and download all of the necessary Microsoft updates
2) Run a virus scan on your pc
3) go to webroot.com and download the free trial version of Spy Sweeper and run that once...

Iposted this "fix" at another forum and it worked for someone else, too...Hope it works for you...

GL...

brewers7

did anyone try this? did it work?

 

[TheGeneral+]

I think it was Dell techs that recommended spysweeper?

 

[Muddy]

My computer currently has an "about blank highjacker"

When you start this ***** up the homepage automaticaly goes to www.a-search.biz or some site like that. Disables my back button at time aswell, real pain in the ass and my tech guy said it needs to be leaned. He must be right cause every time I run Ad-Aware it finds in the neighborhood of 1200 infections on the system

Try this fix:
http://www.softwarepatch.com/tips/about-blank-adware.html


BTW- I have Dell PCs and I have used Ad-Aware for 2-3 years and havent had any problems. They just release a new version, SE! The combination of linksys router, norton internet security has worked well for me