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The Average PC is Infested with Spyware
WoodenRobot writes "This article claims that Earthlink have discovered that the average user's PC has 28 spyware programs on it. More details can be found on Earthlink's spyware auditing page." Compare to a university study. The FTC is hosting a Spyware Workshop.
In related news, a recent study found that the average computer user is an idiot. Film at 11.
That's not fair, of course. For example, try searching for spyware removal software like "Spybot Search and Destroy." Almost all the links you'll find are for imposters that are themselves spyware. Evil.
Earthlink has their own spyware removal sofware, but I'm amazed it doesn't get caught in an infinite loop installing and removing itself, since Earthlink's software includes spyware.
--- JRJ
jrjBlog
Did they install spyware on people's computers to go in and report how much spyware they had?
Rank Presidents by th
...is ten million sysadmins and deskside support people all saying "NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!" in unison.
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The most spyware i've ever cleaned off of a box was 877, as reported by adaware. :p
The unfortunate soul was a windows ME box, so it wasnt destined for greatness even without the spyware.
By the time i got there, opening a browser would cause the machine to reboot, and there was no "System" icon in the control panel. Oh yea, he was running AOL too...
Beat that
I guess we need to make the words "Ad-Aware" as ubiquitous as Google.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The average EarthLink user's machine is infested with spyware.
You can guess what the average AOL user's machine has.
216.194.67.61
Now the rate of spyware/adware requests is down from 2 per second to only 0.3 per second over the last few days :)
Bwhahaha, doing my part in teaching the public :)
19 computers have no spyware, 1 computer has 560.
Internet Explorer
Outlook or Outlook Express
Microsoft, when contacted, insisted there was no relationship
As a longtime Moz user with a poor memory, please refresh me on this software you call IE. Is it an acronym for Intruder Express?
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Well, then break Gator. Hex edit it or whatever so that it crashes from now on.
Next, show her Mozilla. It can remember all her passwords, sans spyware.
Ditch IE for Firefox.
Two months later:
Joe User: "I can't seem to find that link. One of my geek friends recommended a little while ago that I try an IE replacement called Firefox. But I've Googled endlessly and there is no browser by that name."
uh-huh, good, good, good, wait a second! One of those things you mentioned was a Microsoft solution!
Geeze I don't know why adware is such a huge problem. I always tell my family not to click "yes" whenever IE asks you to install something and they don't because I've already installed everything you need. Plus we get the latest windows updates whenever they come out. That alone will keep you safe 99% of times. Unfortunately I suppose there's folks out there that hit "yes" to anything. I wonder if someone put a pay me $100 pop-up (yes/no) if they'd learn faster.
At a friend's computer store he charges $75-150 to remove spy-ware and install ad-aware or spybot. All he does is run ad-aware and then spy-bot. The charge is for the time and the dumbass factor. He has one dumbass that pays this monthly because he's to stupid to stop clicking and run the programs himself.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Yeah, but it takes all the fun out of it when somebody cracks it and discovers that it reads "badgerbadgerbadger."
Sounds like a good course of action there. Just had to chime in, I work for a small repair shop, did a service call a few months back, 2002 Items tagged by AdAware, still waiting to beat that record. Had 12 viruses as well. They couldn't believe how much better there computer ran afterwards, I couldn't believe how long it had run.
Did that 28 include theirs?
"Lyrics", huh? :) Is that what it's referred to as now? :)
Get your own free personal location tracker
The average PC is a Windows box run by an idiot with 28 malwares on it.
Makes sense to me.
</slackwareuser>