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Every 5th Call At Dell Is Spyware-Related
prostoalex writes "Financial Express quotes a Dell executive saying that spyware is installed on roughly 90% computers out there. Right now 20% of all Dell phone support calls are spyware-related. University of Washington research this March published a moderate estimate of 5.1% PCs running spyware."
... and get rid of it if you do...
Spybot Search&Destroy http://spybot.safer-networking.de/
and Ad-Aware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
BTW, be sure to update the definitions or you're going to miss a lot of spyware.
It didn't answer how many of the computers were infected with any spyware program, just those four.
Well as for Mac's -- I don't know if it's part of the culture of the things or what, but there are TONS of mac appps out there that "phone home" to an extent that is generally not tolerated in PC software. A lot of apps even spew network traffic when they start/while they are running to enforce licensing between machines on the LAN. Rather than protest the vendors' applications, though, the community responds as it typically does -- with a ~$10 app named "Little Snitch" that catches this activity. I have never tested it either, but I kind of wonder whether or not "Little Snitch" phones home also...
...I fully concur with that estimation, if not higher.
At least 8 of the 10 computers that I fix follow this routine:
Update and run AV program, if possible.
Install Adaware, update, run.
Install Spybot S&D, update, run.
Run CWShredder.
Fire up a HijackThis! log and manually remove the leftovers.
I'm getting pretty damn good at filtering out the hijackthis logs, too.
Seriously, if you familiarize yourself with spyware removal, you could make a killing on the home PC market. Manufacturers won't help you with spyware. It's getting to the point where the retail chains and PC shops won't deal with it either; they'll simply offer you a format/reinstall.
The guys who determined it was only 5% only looked for 4 specific pieces of spyware. That means 100% of their computers could be infected with the other 8 billion pieces of spyware out there, but only 5% were gator, ezula, and another two that I can't remember right now, even though I just R'd the FA....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
You can get a Dell with no OS, and with FreeDOS in the box. Or you can get a Dell Precision with RH pre-installed.
I use my firewall as a snitch. Not only do plenty of apps phone home but so many of them that do still work perfectly well despite being blockaded from the internet. I do however get quite annoyed by applications that you configure to not use the internet that then still go ahead and try to access the internet.