OK, so I've already got SpyBot Search & Destroy version 1.3 loaded and working nicley. Updated it from 1.2 the other night, and I've got the indication software running with it, which means that if any known spyware trys to be downloaded when opening a page up, I get a box telling me about it.

 

Well I've discovered somthing, that some of you may not know about, unless you're runing the same software yourself. And that is that when you go into your HotMail account at least TWO spyware programs are trying to be loaded into your pc from Hotmail!!!!! And they are, "Avenue A, Inc" and "DoubleClick"

Also I've got XP sp2 installed, and activated the built-in pop-up stopper, and whenever you open up HotMail again, this stops pop-ups from there as well!!

I also downloaded aol's AIM software the other night, and now I've discovered spyware on there as well, it's called "WildTangent"

 

 

So why are these big companies trying to download all this crap into our pc's???? I mean you can understand the little web sites, but why is Uncle bill and Time-Warner bothering?

 

Anyway, rant over :D

Thats a bit worrying Dave, you'd think these big companies

could be trusted.......or not as the case may be :mad:

I run ad-aware on mine, i've also recently downloaded

spybot s&d too, aswell as norton anti-virus, firewall etc...

Still get shite on my pc! Must stop looking at those

left handed websites!

My bet is that the two you mention from Hotmail will be tracking cookies sent by the banner adverts they display - tracking cookies aren't really 'Spyware' in my book as they never actually 'dial home' and send back information, but they are used to track where you go and what you view, whenever you view one of those adverts.

 

They're used because advertising execs and marketing bods like to know if their advertising is working - it'd be nice if they all went away, but I bet they never will..

 

BTW - if I were you, I'd be running AdAware ( http://www.lavasoft.de ) as well as SpyBot (the two together will detect a larger percentage of current spyware), get a decent firewall (the SP2 one doesn't count ;)) and use a different browser like Mozilla's Firefox - much better than IE anyway ;)

 

Switch away from Outlook for email (to Thunderbird) and you'll be pretty immune to email and browser borne virii, trojans and spyware ;) (Still need to run a good virus scanner though, of course)

 

Apologies if all that was teaching granny to suck the proverbial eggs :)

Thanks for the advise, much appreciated :D

 

I used to run AdAware before i found out about SpyBot, will probably put it back on again. Also currentley running McAfee firewall, seems to be doing a good job, also got Norton AntVirus running, on auto-update. Will look into Mozilla's Firefox as well. Outlook express - I've never used it, dont see the point in it's features myself, as both my aol and hotmail tell me if i receive mail, and thats all i need anyway.

 

PS- I know quite a few will say that AOL is crap, or whatever, but it works for me, and does what I want out of it, so it'll stay for now.

 

Again, thanks for that.

UPDATE -

 

Re-installed AdAware SE, and it found 43 items, not bad at all. Also intsalled Mozilla's Firefox, seems a nice program to use, simular in operation to IE.

 

Oh! and you weren't teach granny ;) lol :bow:

If you run both adaware & spybot (obviously not at the same time),

you'll find that spybot creates a restore system in case you ever need

to reload anything it's found before. When you run adaware, it'll go

into this and find all the items that spybot has quarantined!

A friend of mine ran adaware for the 1st time and found 720 items!!!!

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118069,00.asp

 

May be of some interest,

 

make sure you keep firefox upto date also, there seems to be a security bug found in that every few weeks at the moment.

erm http://www.webroot.com spysweeper > than rest. :p

 

Bulletproof combo = McAfee Security suite (only use the AV & Firewall) & Spysweeper (run a manual sweep once a week) & Diskkeeper Pro to keep your hard drive in tip top defragmentation.