Adware/Spyware Getting More Aggressive
from the installs-itself,-doesn't-uninstall-ever dept
The makers of adware and spyware products are getting ever more creative and aggressive in taking over computers. Wired News has an article about some adware called Xupiter that many people are struggling with these days. They say that it installs itself without asking for permission, takes over your browser, changes your homepage, takes over your searches, and will even add random words to things you type. All that, and it's incredibly difficult to uninstall. The makers of the program say that it only installs after permission has been granted and they offer an uninstaller. However, people have said both things are not true. I'm guessing that most of the people who discovered it was installed without their permission got it by downloading some sort of file sharing application that had it bundled in.
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My wife managed to get this on one of our computers. I think it came from an electronic greeting card. Ad-aware did not clean it. I had to go through the registry manually and delete every key that made reference to it.
BTW, Zone Alarm caught it when it tried to phone home. Even though I have a hardware firewall protecting my network, I have the free version of Zone Alarm on every PC just to catch any unauthorized outgoing traffic.
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ad aware hasn't been updated in months. Try spybot search and destroy, a TechTV favorite:
http://security.kolla.de/
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As of this past Monday, January 27, they've released a new version of Ad-aware, version 6. They're apparently selling the for-pay version now, but attempts to download the free version just get you a messagebox promising that the download will be available in Febuary.
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a cool site about zupiter and getting rid of it is and.doxdesk.com/parasite/xupiter
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I meant and.doxdesk.com parasite xupiter
WITH the spaces
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