… or what I did with my summer vacation.
After long battles with spyware that resulted in my computer crashing, followed by a visit to Computer Heaven, I have decided to describe briefly some of the things I learned to do to combat securing my computer. Remember, these are newbie steps!!
For me, at least, understanding why and how something works helps me to make sense of what needs doing, but all this security stuff is so far beyond me that I often feel overwhelmed. I, like most of my friends and my husband, act is if ignorance is bliss when it comes to the inner working of mechanical and technological things. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig calls this the “romantic” view. When it comes to, THIS IS A BAD IDEA ™. The consequences of ignoring this problem range from minor to significant. At the minor end, you get inconvenienced with a barrage of popups and webpage highjackings. At the major end, your can suffer from identify theft (dun dun DUN…….). In between, though, comes a whole slough of crapola that includes losing control of your browser or having so much invisible stuff stealing your RAM that your computer is noticeably slow. Once my computer was finally cleaned of the offending intruders, the very first thing I did was switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. Firefox is much more aggressive about security and it’s attacked much less frequently than IE. In addition, I had installed AVG, a free anti-virus program. AVG has a neat feature — when you run a google search, AVG will tell you which pages are safe and which are threats.
What it all means! Basic explanations of what Spyware is and how it works:
How to Protect Your Computer from Spyware and Adware — This Microsoft site explains what adware and spyware is. Basically, adware is software that displays advertisements on your computer, and spyware is software that sends your personal information to a third party without your permission or knowledge. The description is simple and brief and includes excellent links.
Internet Intruders — This site gives an extensive list and explanation of various types of internet intruders and what they do.
What it looks like! Nine warning signs that you’ve been hit
1. When you start your browser, the home page has mysteriously changed. You change it back manually, but before long you find that it has changed back again.
2. You get pop-up advertisements when your browser is not running or when your system is not even connected to the Internet, or you get pop-up ads that address you by name.
3. Your phone bill includes expensive calls to 900 numbers that you never made-probably at an outrageous per-minute rate.
4. You enter a search term in Internet Explorer’s address bar and press Enter to start the search. Instead of your usual search site, an unfamiliar site handles the search.
5. A new item appears in your Favorites list without your putting it there. No matter how many times you delete it, the item always reappears later.
6. Your system runs noticeably slower than it did before. If you’re a Windows 2000/XP user, launching the Task Manager and clicking the Processes tab reveals that an unfamiliar process is using nearly 100 percent of available CPU cycles.
7. At a time when you’re not doing anything online, the send or receive lights on your dial-up or broadband modem blink just as wildly as when you’re downloading a file or surfing the Web. Or the network/modem icon in your system tray flashes rapidly even when you’re not using the connection.
8. A search toolbar or other browser toolbar appears even though you didn’t request or install it. Your attempts to remove it fail, or it comes back after removal.
9. And the final sign is: Everything appears to be normal. The most devious spyware doesn’t leave traces you’d notice, so scan your system anyway.
–From Fastnet
What to do! What to do!
The three most important steps to this process are first, keep your computer up to date on security patches from Microsoft (or whoever you got your operating system from), because malicious programs work by exploiting holes in your operating system.
Second, install programs that lets you clean up your computer clean. There are several programs that are excellent and Free: Ad-Aware, Spybot Search&Destroy, and CWShredder. The first time I ran them, I was surprised at how much they found. It reminds me of plaque on your teeth or barnacles on an old ship or something. Like anti-virus programs, these programs work best when fresh and up-to-date.
Third, install something that will help _keep_ your computer clean. I use WinPatrol. WinPatrol has a cute little scotty dog that barks every time something evil is about to happen to my machine. It also has features that can help clean up an infested system. There’s a shareware version and a registered version. I paid for my version because it gives a host of information about what’s on your computer and I needed it in order to clean out my system. Man, I was so toxic!
Now, if you get into a lot of trouble, you can try to get tech support on line. There’s a great website called Tech Support Guy, where people will review logs of your registry and tell you what to delete. To get a log, you use a free program called Hijack This. Hijack this is a /serious/ program. Don’t take any action with this program other than to post a log on Tech Support Guy. Once you post, some nice tech type person will review the log and tell you step by step what to do. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I started poking around and ended up at Computer Heaven.
What NOT to do!
Do not use any other spyware or malware cleaners without thoroughly researching the program first. There are many bogus programs out there that are, in fact, malware themselves. Once they are installed, they are a BITCH to remove. I know because I made this mistake myself.
(written summer 2004; revised summer 2009)