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On the Prevalence and Removal of Spyware?

Posted by Cliff on from the removal-of-those-pesky-spytraps dept.

oo7tushar asks: "There's a lot of spyware out there these days. As a Windows/Linux user I'm concerned about what spyware is installed on my machines and I'm very concerned about this issue when it comes to Windows. A few questions for the masses: What are the most common spying applications that are installed? How do I get rid of them without getting rid of the parent application? Have you encountered spyware on Linux?"

5 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Removing Spyware by Innomi · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a program called AdAware which will automaticly remove spyware from your system. Some programs though, refuse to run if thier spyware is missing. Adware: http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?5000000038314

  2. Watching for Spyware by jayers · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spyware needs to communicate what it is spying. A personal firewall on your machine and some understanding of what your machine should be sending out to others and receiving in can be surprisingly effective in telling you about things happening on your machine. A good one lets you set up default acceptance for your normal stuff and so you see only exceptions.

    1. Re:Watching for Spyware by dschuetz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and most of everything that tries to connect over non standard port will be stoped

      Yeah, but if you were writing a spy-ware program, would you use a non-standard port to send it out?

      I'd just send it over HTTP on port 80. Or better yet, HTTPS on 443, so no content-sniffing could be done on it. Would you be willing to stop all web browsing traffic leaving your home/site/corporation?

      The only way, then, to stop this would be to block traffic to particular sites, but if the traffic goes to microsoft.com, you're hosed 'cause you *need* to go there at least monthly to fix whatever's currently broken. :) Plus, now you need a community-contributed and -distributed blackout list (of known spyware URLs), and at that point, you might just as well be using AdAware.

      If these programs aren't already doing this, then they're even dumber than I thought. Unless *I* am dumber than I thought (and I admit I can be pretty stupid at times) and I've missed something obvious here.

  3. Try Who's Watching Me by YoshiR · · Score: 4, Informative

    Spyware detection software. www.trapware.com

  4. AdAware is cool, but... by fm6 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Some programs though, refuse to run if thier spyware is missing.
    Not the clever ones. Gator just goes ahead and re-installs the spyware. Which is why I'm back to filling in my own forms.

    I'm actually pretty sloppy about privacy. But a lot of spyware -- including Gator's -- hooks into Explorer and other shell programs at a very basic level. Results range from an irritating loss of response to maddening crashes and lockups.

    AdAware is quite good. But you also need Ref-Update (to keep your AdAware signature file current) and Ad-Search (to help avoid downloading spyware in the first place). All three available here.