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Spyware Masquerading as Spyware Removal Software
Cocooner writes "News.com is reporting that some of the anti-spyware/adware software out there is doing more harm than good by acting as double agents. One example is a software package named SpyBan (google cache since the original site has been removed), which happened to be hosted by download.com, accused of installing Look2Me, which monitors and reports web surfing habits. SpyBan was downloaded over 44000 times before it was pulled. How 'low' can they go?"
If you run a Windows system then I heartily recommend Spybot Seek & Destroy to keep it clean and immunized. Support the author too, donate a few bucks for good work.
not related in any way, just a satisfied user
Trolling is a art,
Spybot
Ad-Aware
There are others, but these pretty much have it covered i think.
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This is similar to credit card scam that Bruce Schneier pointed out in his latest cryptogram. Fooling people into eating poison wrapped up as a remedy. Bastards.
New Credit Card Scam
This one is clever.
You receive a telephone call from someone purporting to be from your credit card company. They claim to be from something like the security and fraud department, and question you about a fake purchase for some amount close to $500.
When you say that the purchase wasn't yours, they tell you that they're tracking the fraudsters and that you will receive a credit. They tell you that the fraudsters are making fake purchases on cards for amounts just under $500, and that they're on the case.
They know your account number. They know your name and address. They continue to spin the story, and eventually get you to reveal the three extra numbers on the back of your card.
That's all they need. They then start charging your card for amounts just under $500. When you get your bill, you're unlikely to call the credit card company because you already know that they're on the case and that you'll receive a credit.
It's a really clever social engineering attack. They have to hit a lot of cards fast and then disappear, because otherwise they can be tracked, but I bet they've made a lot of money so far.
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Yep! I've been praising SpyBot and recommending it to practically everyone running a PC on the Inet for months now. (As I said in a previous /. thread, I work doing on-site PC service, and this program, alone, cures more PC issues I run into than anything else we use.)
I'll tell you another little tip, though. If SpyBot already claims it's cleaned everything up, but your PC is *still* spontaneously generating pop-up ads on the screen, or running abnormally slow (perhaps you still see odd processes listed as running in the process list?), here's the way to fix it.
Run regedit, and search the entire registry for "run once". There are several "run once" registry keys, with plain old "run" keys directly above each of them. (You're mainly interested in what's in the "run" keys, but searching for "run" will find hundreds of things we're not interested in.) If they're starting up some kind of trojan horse or spyware/adware program on your Windows PC (and assuming it's not simply in the "Startup" program group!), they've got to be doing it in one of these "run" keys. Look for sneaky files in there with names like "windowsupdater.exe" (MS doesn't ever run a file by this name to do the real Windows updates), or just gibberish names like 0br003445l.exe and delete them from the "value" line of the "run" key. I've even seen files in there I wasn't sure about, until I looked in the folder under "Program Files" where it was running from; Then I saw a *documentation* file in the program's folder explaining that the utility was "designed to automatically present advertisements to the computer user at random intervals"!