Does Spyware Damage Windows Networking?

Posted by Cliff on Monday July 1, 2002 @06:45AM from the removing-the-stealth-riders dept.

DerBryGuy asks: "I work for an ISP in Canada. Recently we have had a rash of customers whose computers can connect via DSL, but cannot browse, or often even ping. Invariably it turns out that there is some spy ware of some sort installed on the customers machine - usually New dot Net or the other drek that comes with Kazaa. About half the time if this is removed correctly (manually or by using ad-aware) then the machine will regain http access. However the other half of the time the only option we have found is to format and reinstall the OS. So I am wondering, are other ISP's seeing this? What do they do when they get a similar complaint and they detect spyware on the machine. Is there any recourse for the customer? I mean most of these people had no idea what New dot Net was when their kid installed Kazaa, and now they are stuck with a computer store bill for reinstalling their machine."

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This problem by brsmith4 · 2002-07-01 06:59 · Score: 2, Troll

I have experienced the same problem where I work at my school. Many of our users can dial-up, but they cannot access web sites or ping anything. I have not been able to fix this except with Windows ME or XP, both of which have the System Restore function. I thought that it could be spyware and I warned others in my staff about it. They told me basically that I was full of crap and that there was no way spyware could damage someone's network settings. I always thought that spyware on a windoze box had the power to do whatever it felt like. Maybe now that they see this on /., they might take me seriously or no, I am probably still full of crap.