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Spyware / Adware - Removing the dark side of the web from your computer
After you've been surfing the web for a while, you may start to notice problems with your once slick and quick, lean and mean computer. What effects do you see?
What effects don't you see?
Popup ads in particular are amongst the most irritating and sometimes affect well established respected websites that you wouldn't expect to deliver such ads. The reason that this happens is that your computer has become infected with is variously called "parasites", "scumware", "adware", "spyware" or "malware". This is unsolicited commercial software which is actually installed on YOUR COMPUTER. How did it get there? There are two main routes:
The purpose of this unrequested software is to make money for those who go about getting it installed on your computer by their various nefarious means. In the case of "free" software or services such as file sharing (which is in itself largely illegal anyway) it is the manner in which this "service" pays for itself. Removal of this software is deliberately difficult. It buries itself deep in your machine and gives few or no clues as to where it is. A quick list of some of these programmes:
And many, many more...... The chances are that if you have any of these, it won't just be the one, there'll be loads of them. These are not viruses and so your anti-virus utility won't be able to spot them. They often masquerade as "useful shopping utilities" or otherwise helpful little applications to "enhance your surfing experience" - they do no such thing!
OK lets get rid of them!
Ad-aware
from lavasoft, works well for many of these programs (but not for some of
the more aggressive ones). Download the free programme and run it on your system,
the chances are it will show a list of spyware programs on your computer -
most of which are news to you. Spy Bot is another free programme that often finds things that Ad-aware can't. It is however a rather more advanced interface and you need to have more idea of what you're removing or you may inadvertently remove some useful free programmes by disabling the advertising banners for them so they no longer work. Recommended though.
Once I'm clean, how do I stay clean? 1/ Be extremely careful about what you download. There are many free software giveaways that are legitimate and useful, but as a rule of thumb be wary. If the software appears to be really useful, has a lot of features, has no time-limited demo, doesn't at any point ask for any kind of contribution of money, and doesn't display its own ads, then it's probably too good to be true. If it turns up as an "offer" without you selecting it with a "yes / no" option, then go for no. Legitimate software waits for you to invite it onto your computer - and that's usually after having spent some time searching for it. 2/ Go to the Microsoft Windows Update Page and download any recent security patches, alternatively, you can go to the "Start" button probably at the bottom left of your screen, it will lead you to a "Windows Update" feature where your machine will be scanned and the recommended latest updates delivered to you. 3/ If you have a broadband connection to the internet and stay connected most of the day, then get yourself a firewall such as PC-cillin internet security - USA or Internet security - UK, these will protect your computer from all kinds of attacks from viruses to programmes that try to access your machine without your permission. 4/ Set your Internet Explorer security settings to not automatically allow ActiveX controls to download and run. Go to - Tools/Internet Options/Security/Custom Level and set the ActiveX download options to at least require a prompt before being actioned, or to disable them, i.e. don't leave them on enable as a default setting. You should set the overall security control to at least "medium" if you set it higher than this it may interfere with surfing your normal favourite sites, with continual prompts to allow them to work properly. 5/ As more people use Internet Explorer than any other web browser, then this is what the malware distributors target. If you use a different browser, then you will probably find yourself unaffected. Firefox is recommended if you want to take this particular route, although there are some programmes now targeting Firefox. note, despite claims to the contrary, such browsers are not particularly inherently more secure than MicroSoft Internet Explorer, as they are "minority" browsers, they are simply not targeted as IE is.
Stopping unwanted Pop Up Ads You've scanned and cleaned your computer, but some websites use lots of popup ads for advertising, either at random or on entry or exit to/from a page. To deal with these you can download some software that will do it, or use the Google toolbar which blocks unwanted popup ads amongst other functions. The toolbar is free and also has many handy search tools, there are some privacy issues with it that you may want to check out before you download and start using it (the now infamous pay-off for a "free" product). I use it regularly and personally don't have a problem with it. A final word of warning, some types of websites are more prone than others to deliver scumware programmes - if you play in the swamp then expect to get icky. Got a really difficult malware hijacker to remove, try here News stories: What malware can do to your computer |
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