Register | Login
Views: 19364387
Main | Memberlist | Active users | ACS | Commons | Calendar | Online users
Ranks | FAQ | Color Chart | Photo album | IRC Chat
11-02-05 12:59 PM
0 user currently in Hardware/Software.
Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Hardware/Software - No Big Surprise... estimated 90% of machines are infected with spyware
  
User name:
Password:
Reply:
 

UserPost
Ailure
Posts: 5510/11162
I doubt thoose Applications are that important thought. And if anything it's mostly going to be Microsoft products. At least for now...
DarkSlaya
Posts: 2267/4249
I finally got my sister to use FireFox, and I since she doesn't have Admin rights, she wont install anything. And I've always been using a Firewall and Antivirus. ALWAYS. I think about other people, too (Some viruses can kill a whole network, or e-mail boxes.)
Surlent
Posts: 622/1077
The mad thing is, in near future there will be applications which will require SP2 to run normally due to some updated system files or other stuff *shudders*
I'm one of the people having no problem at all, but in two weeks it will be one months on that new machine and I will begin to backup my most important data (putting setup.exe files from programs, folders including music) on a rewriteable DVD ... just in case, it will mess up some day
Tarale
Posts: 552/2720
Yeah, I've even heard from people in the wireless business that SP2 breaks teh wireless.

Course, they're all now using Linux, and have given up on Windows.... at least for now.
Ailure
Posts: 5495/11162
Not if you setup it right, SP2 messed up internet for me. But that's becuse I had a network bridge which was unused anyway, shut that off and it worked.

SP2 was supposed to add more support to wireless networks, and to make them easier to setup. But it seems like the opposite for many people.
Ran-chan
Posts: 4344/12781
Ergh...Windows ME... When we had that at home, the computer was completely messed up...

Millions of bugs and shit aswell...

Service Pack 2 block EVERYTHING and it messes up wireless networks aswell...
Tarale
Posts: 522/2720


And yeah, it IS kinda obvious that there are a lot of machines infected with spyware. Hell, even the ones here at work are.... although usually not very much at all....

My machines have less than others' but then I'm the sole Firefox user on the helpdesk. I have actually had to download spyware on purpose here, so that it comes up on AdAware scans when I'm writing up instructions for users...
HyperLamer
Posts: 1799/8210
It might have to do with the images having a fixed height but not width. Post it here so we can see what it's supposed to look like. (Had to delete the URL to change icons.)
Tarale
Posts: 520/2720
Originally posted by HyperHacker
I'm just going to remove that huge thread icon now so the tables can go back to a normal size.


Yeah, it wasn't meant to resize itself to some bizarre size.... The FARK icons aren't as big as it decided it wanted to be here.... sorry.

Just wondering, why did it do that? (Make itself bigger than it should be, that is?)
Ailure
Posts: 5478/11162
Guess what, I hadn't done a spyware check in months. Seems like the blocking works very well. I hadn't gotten any spyware, not even a tracking cookie. And yes it does check the Firefox cookies too.
Prier
Posts: 3722/8392
Originally posted by Ailure
Belive me Acmlm, sisters are a great way to get spyware/malware in general...


Exactly why I have to run cleanup when I get on this or after I come back from Pre-Calc night classes.
HyperLamer
Posts: 1796/8210
I'm just going to remove that huge thread icon now so the tables can go back to a normal size.
Ailure
Posts: 5464/11162
Belive me Acmlm, sisters are a great way to get spyware/malware in general. In fact the only way I got Spyware before I used Firefox was actually through my sister. Which uses IE becuse some of her sites uses IE only code heavily, come on if they don't follow the W3C standards...

Now I made Spybot to block alot of spyware infesting sites with the host file. (blocks cookies at least)

Service pack 2 is supposed to stop spyware and dialers which installs itself. And I also uinstalled Microsoft Java machine and set it to ask whenever there is a ActiveX script whatever.
Prier
Posts: 3708/8392
I still use IE...and I swapped out of ZoneAlarm for TrendMicro since it goes for the whole package that way (although it does more than I'd like and it sucks the hell out of my swap file at times...it's a lot less hassle). I don't reinstall every month...in fact I only do that if I hit a dead end.

Only thing I'm usually at a loss for is the damn tracking cookies. Malware is extremely rare on this thing now (as opposed to around the BLASTER incident where I had jack crap).
Acmlm
Posts: 904/1173
I've run into spyware before (a few years ago), but pretty small and harmless amounts ... I still use Internet Explorer, get a ton of spam emails and don't run spyware scans often, my current Windows XP install has been running for almost 2 years, yet Ad-aware still never finds spyware on my computer (other than cookies from ads)

However, the 2 home computers (that my parents and sisters use) got so much spyware crap in them (within a year) that one of them needed a full cleanup (reinstall) and Zone Alarm got installed on both ... and that was with frequent scans, the spyware just kept coming back

So it all depends on what you do with the computer ... stay away from suspicious freeware and Internet Explorer plugins and you should be fine, although I guess using a different browser helps too
Ailure
Posts: 5458/11162
Let see, had this installation of Win XP for two years. There is junk in the Windows folder but nothing that slow the computer down. Still, I should do a major cleaning again.

Windows 98 on the other hand having a "half-life", last year I reinstalled it after four years of usage. That was really refreshing...
Surlent
Posts: 619/1077
I ran Windows ME for three years ... I got 2 viruses in that time, an it were two harmless ones when I still used IE
Since Firebird 0.7 was released, I switched to that neat and small browser; now I'm running my neat Firefox 1.0 PR using a German language pack from 0.9.3 (though the official version in German is not released yet ) and I'm having major security plus more comfort in browsing. Plus no more tracking cookies like in IE

I use Windows XP Home with SP2 with all additional updates plus AntiVir (I set it to auto-update at 6:00 AM every day), Sygate Personal Firewall and perform a weekly scan with my anti-virus in less than ten minutes for all my four partitions, and also once per week I run Spybot Search & Destroy, searching for updates first.

This is not too hard to use a personal firewall and a virus scanner parallel. Many firewalls have major problems since they can be shut down from a remote computer trying to hack into it, but combined with an anti-virus using an active "Virus Guard", using also your brain to check what pages to visit and what to open and what not - this already prevents nearly any damage from the net.

And I have Auto Updates enabled. Despite I'm on ISDN only, when coming to Windows Update, that's the only time I give Internet Explorer temporary powers to connect through Sygate in order to search for new updates if I want to check it automatically
Tarale
Posts: 517/2720
Originally posted by BMF54123
See, this is why I choose to ignore most people that complain about Windows "crashing all the time"...maybe they wouldn't HAVE so many stability issues if their machine wasn't loaded with spyware.

I reboot Windows maybe once or twice a month, and have NEVER reinstalled it on my primary computer--I've upgraded straight from WFW 3.11 -> Win95 -> Win98 SE and gone through numerous hardware upgrades, and it still runs nice and smooth. So why does every respected "computer genius" tell you to reinstall it every month? Is keeping Windows clean and tidy really such a hard concept to grasp?


Clearly you've never dealt with Windows ME

Heh, Windows DOES have a half life, in particular the 98 kernel ones, but some people are lucky.

And I'd never tell anybody to reinstall every month, don't reinstall unless your system is crying out for it, or you're an uber-clean-freak.

I am a little bit on the clean freak end of things, but I'm too lazy to reinstall... I just ghost my machine.
Ran-chan
Posts: 4324/12781
I dn
BMF98567
Posts: 407/1261
See, this is why I choose to ignore most people that complain about Windows "crashing all the time"...maybe they wouldn't HAVE so many stability issues if their machine wasn't loaded with spyware.

I reboot Windows maybe once or twice a month, and have NEVER reinstalled it on my primary computer--I've upgraded straight from WFW 3.11 -> Win95 -> Win98 SE and gone through numerous hardware upgrades, and it still runs nice and smooth. So why does every respected "computer genius" tell you to reinstall it every month? Is keeping Windows clean and tidy really such a hard concept to grasp?
This is a long thread. Click here to view it.
Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Hardware/Software - No Big Surprise... estimated 90% of machines are infected with spyware


ABII


AcmlmBoard vl.ol (11-01-05)
© 2000-2005 Acmlm, Emuz, et al



Page rendered in 0.005 seconds.