Dealing With Invaders: Bad Programs & Spam
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These are programs that are designed to do damage to your computer.
To deal with these, you need to have an up-to-date anti-virus program installed on your machine, and you need to update it by downloading the latest DAT files that the company will send out (as often as every 2 or 3 days sometimes) to keep up with the constantly changing viruses out there. If you wish to get the latest data about all things malicious on the Internet, go to WindowsSecrets.com and read the Windows Secrets Newsletter, which I highly recommend. Subscription is free, and it keeps you up to date about all things Windows and the Net. There
are a number of good, reliable commercial anti virus packages available.
Most of them can be purchased on-line for a modest price. A few good
brands are: Some virus software manufacturers actually make their software available free for personal use (on-line registration may be required). These are fully functional anti-virus software packages that have all the necessary features needed to protect your system from malicious code. Examples of free anti virus software that are known to be rock-solid performers are: Avira, AVG Anti Virus and Avast Software, along with ClamWin, and Comodo. Make certain that the software is configured to receive new virus definition updates (DAT Files) on a regular basis. Disclaimer:
I am not promoting these companies, or claiming that they guarantee
you a virus-proof existence. There are other products that may prove
just as helpful to you, if not more so. You can help prevent the spread of these nasties by reading below in "e-mail & spam". If you want more details about the world of viruses, you can check out some real world examples from someone who teaches about this stuff here, at http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/bademails.html Hoaxes and Scams Please be aware that much of the time, people are warned about viruses, or feel their machine has been infected, when, in reality, there is nothing wrong. These are hoaxes that people spread unwittingly (or deliberately). Hoaxes do as much to slow down the Internet as any virus ("Tell everyone on your mailing list that blah blah blah . . . ."). You can always check out whether or not the warning about the virus (or other rumors) are true by going to a site like http://www.snopes.com/snopes.asp or to http://www.scambusters.org/. Symantec keeps track of virus hoaxes at http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html. Also, be aware when you are offered "free" ringtones or other such goodies from the Net. Spywear often is packaged with the freebies. Just remember the old saying: nothing is really free - someone, somewhere, will be paying for it. Just don't let it be you. E-Mail and Spam E-mail is a great boon to people, allowing them to keep in touch over great distances almost instantaneously. The down side of this is that there are people who will use this technology to spread not only viruses and worms, but “spam” as well. Spam is unwanted junk mail, and just as you find that junk mail in your physical mailbox is a waste of your time and a waste of the post office’s resources, so it is that e-mail junk taxes the resources of computer systems all over the world. It is estimated that about 70% of all e-mail is spam of one sort or another. How do they get your address to send you this stuff? And why does this stuff continue to grow when much of it (eg. “male enhancement”) can’t be appealing to all that many people . . . . can it? One way your address is harvested is when you visit a site to use a “free” service. When you are invited to send free e-mail using pre made cards or animation, for example, you give away your e-mail address and at least one other's --- the recipient's. You can also give your address away by filling out information at web sites which may be sharing that information with other organizations.
The only way people can try to avoid spam is to try to protect your e-mail address and private information in general. One should avoid clicking on ads that promise things too good to be true. Spam is so cheap to send, one paying customer covers the advertiser's cost for millions of emails. If we could just get everyone to ignore it, and not buy anything from the spammers, it really would go away. As soon as it is not profitable, it will cease to exist. Remember:
Among spammers there's
trends and fads, and I'm not getting so many offers to You could be pro-active and join an organization like the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email as well. Just click on their logo to go to their web page. About 60% of all spam is now sent via zombie-infected machines, according to Spamhaus.org, a respected antispam service. Besides using their bot networks to send spam, spammers last year started directing their zombie armies to flood and disable the servers used by antispam groups. What are "zombie" machines? In early 2003 spammers, crackers and virus writers joined forces to launch the first known spam virus, W32.SoBig.E, a Trojan designed to infect computers worldwide to create an arsenal of proxies/zombies through which spammers could send billions of spams anonymously. I know . . . it's scary out there. If you want more details about the world of spam, you can check out some real world examples from someone who teaches about this stuff here, at http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/bademails.html There is lots of spam going around with funny subjects like "Mike Tyson to Fight Michael Jackson" or "Afghanistan to be 51st US State", or other equally absurd lines designed to hook unwary recipients into clicking the URL in the spam. Unfortunately, the results of following that link are not at all funny. The victim's computer can be infected with a Trojan horse, it will become part of a spam, malware and DDoS (denial of service) botnet (jargon for a collection of software robots), and all the user's personal data may be compromised. Adware & Spyware These programs
often will change your homepage, deluge you with constant pop-ups
and new Explorer windows, monitor your on-line spending habits,
and transmit that information to a second party. These programs
might also drastically slow down the speed of your computer. Both adware and spyware programs are often installed by the computer user when he or she downloads free programs or shareware. These downloads often specify in their license agreements that the adware or spyware programs are included in the download and when the user agrees to the license agreement, they accept these programs. Most people don't actually read these agreement because they can be very long and in legalese. The reason these companies do this is because the SpyWare developers pay for every installation of the SpyWare onto a users computer.
Other forms of adware and spyware are downloaded if you click on the pop-up dialog boxes that so often appear while you're on-line. In surveys, 74% of users whose PCs are running adware from Claria (formerly Gator) said they had no knowledge of it being installed.
Disclaimer: I am not promoting these companies, or saying they are better than others in getting rid of spyware. I've used these programs, and have found them effective, but there are others that might suit you better, or work just as well. Many women have been abused by their intimate partners; such abuse is often preceded by stalking, which is increasingly taking electronic form. Activities can be monitored by spyware known as a key logger, which records a victim's keystrocks and sends images of the computer's screen to whoever installed the spywear. Such software is easy to find. Phishing / BASIC RULES of Internet Life:
The following is part of a warning posted (as of Sept.,2006) at E-Bay: Warning Signs of a Spoof Email A. Sender's Email Address Please note that Microsoft itself has posted a very detailed warning (and example) about this kind of scam here, Pharming, a new and special kind of scam in which a trusted website is faked, is discussed here. "Spear phishing" targets e-mail addresses stolen from a company or organization with a spoofed message purporting to be from "human resources" or a collegue. You don’t have to be stupid to get caught. So what do you do? If you do get
a message from your bank or other company that looks legitimate,
DON’T follow the links given in the email
message. Go to the web site yourself using you own favorites or
hand-typed links. The same information or details that are in the
email message should be on the web site you navigate to.
Assuming you have a Windows machine, you select "Windows Update" using Internet Explorer every once in a while to have Microsoft check to see if you are in need of what they call a "critical update". If you are in need, they will tell you, and you need to download it and install it. Do NOT click on a pop up ad - especially one that says your computer is "insecure". You could be transported to a spywear site or, worse, have malware automatically downlo9aded to your computer. Cheating Please note the promo below:
'Nuf said. Although teachers counter these "services" with tools of their own, unless teachers closely monitor what their students are producing step-by-step, the determination of what constitutes a student's own work can become increasingly difficult. Hate Sites Right now, there are over eight thousand websites, portals, chat groups, games, and message board pstings that raise red flags for experts in online hate and terrorism. These numbers are growing every day. You can report a hate posting by writing to iReport@weisenthal.com, and letting your appropriate government representatives know how you feel about the posting(s). Final Word If you want to enjoy the benefits of computer technology without making the effort to use it responsibly, people are going to get really upset with you. Running an unprotected PC (personal computer) is a form of negligence analogous to driving a car with bad brakes. You're going to get yourself into trouble, and also make things worse for everyone around you. Just as drivers who share the road must also share responsibility for safety, we all now share the same global network, and must regard computer security as a necessary social responsibility. |
Dealing
With Viruses / Trojans / Worms
So,
how do you get rid of these invaders? Manual
removal
of them is difficult: most adware hides
itself very well. Even if you delete the program
you think contained the adware, there's no guarantee
that you have deleted the adware or spyware program.
So, you need to
fight these programs with another program. Many
of the reputable, anti-virus program manufacturers are
beginning to include adware and spyware scanning into
their software. You could contact your anti-virus program's
technical help and ask them for assistance. There are
also third-party programs available that specifically
detect and remove spyware, such as 
See an example 
