malware

Greg McCorkill · Post by **Greg McCorkill** » Sat, Apr 25 2009, 1:50PM

to everyone using avg free beware it is not protecting your computer.my almost new system might as well be a boat anchor unless i pay 200 plus to have all the stuff avg didnt detect removed

Wally Schneeberger · Post by **Wally Schneeberger** » Sat, Apr 25 2009, 6:45PM

Download and run CCleaner on your system first. It's free and does a great job on cookies and trojans. I run it at least once a week. After you run it the first time then you will have to save the cookies that you want to keep (like Ecabs) so you don't have to sign in after running it. AVG is great for Viruses but doesn't stop a lot of spyware.

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Sun, Apr 26 2009, 5:59AM

Greg McCorkill wrote:to everyone using avg free beware it is not protecting your computer.my almost new system might as well be a boat anchor unless i pay 200 plus to have all the stuff avg didnt detect removed

That is not a true statement. AVG Free works great at detecting and preventing all sorts of malware. You have to keep the database updated with daily updates, enable resident shield and be diligent about blocking cookies, not clicking on popups, not opening email from unnknown senders, etc.

In addition to AVG Free, I use Spybot Search & Destroy to detect and prevent malware. It has an "immunize" feature that keeps your system protected against hundreds of thousands of known malware threats. You also have to keep it updated and apply the new immunizations daily or you will not be protected against new threats. Spybot SD also has what they call "paranoid mode" that will bug the daylights out of you asking about every cookie, etc.

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Sun, Apr 26 2009, 6:35AM

One other thought Greg, who told you it would cost $200+ to clean you system? Beware of popups that say your system is infected and you can get it "cleaned" if you pay. Also beware of websites that offer free scans then ask you to pay to "clean" your system. These sites are almost always scams and if you pay, they will plant malware on your system.

There are also many computer shops that practice the same tactics as the popup scams. You have them check your system for some problem, only to learn that your system is "riddled with viruses and malware" and they will "clean" it for $$$. In 99.999% of the cases, your system does not contain any malware--they are just scamming you. Don't fall for it.

Microsoftis a very good place to start for online scans. Kaspersky Labs is also a reliable, free online scanner that will not plant malware on your system. In fact, Kaspersky is one of the very few online scanners that is not a scam. Others that are legit include Kaspersky, Norton and McAfee (even though I would NEVER user Norton/Symantec or McAfee for A/V).

Peter Walsh · Post by **Peter Walsh** » Sun, Apr 26 2009, 1:33PM

I am always interested in what folks do to protect their PC's, home, and shop from theft and intrusion.
I have great difficulty in understanding all the effort put into finding "free" software to protect such a critical tool as my PC. I do everything on this PC box. Customer contact, eCab, quotations, on and on, not to mention all my personal stuff, photos, e-mails, letters, etc. To trust this all to a "free" software provider frankly doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
Years ago I got hit with a trojan that was recording all my keystrokes and sending them to a computer server in China! That was it for me!
Since then, I have been using http://webroot.com as my source for protection. In my last update (just today) I see I am now protected against 1,029,309 definitions (viruses & trojans, etc.). If anyone believes that a "free" software is going to provide this scope of protection I think he will be sorely disappointed. A "free" source does not have the staff, equipment, time, money, etc. to deal with this ever-increasing threat. They do catch some threats, admittedly, but I want my software to catch them all.

I do agree that "free" software is better than nothing, but in my humble opinion.......not comprehensively better. I pay about $60/yr. for this subscription and that covers three machines. That's $20 bucks a PC. If you can't afford that, add it to the next quotation and let the customer pay for it.

If you visit the WebRoot web site you will see they offer a free scan to demonstrate how much crap they can find on your machine. It might be fun to run the "free" stuff and then run WebRoot's. If you don't use your machine for very much web surfing, you may not have much crap on your PC. But I do a lot of everything and the threat is out there for sure.
Anyway, my humble take on the subject.
regards,

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Sun, Apr 26 2009, 4:51PM

I agree with you to some degree Peter. While AVG has a free version, they also have paid products for PCs, servers, email servers, etc. AVG consistantly rates at or near the top when it comes to malware protection. There is no difference in the free and paid versions when it comes to the virus database or protection. The paid version offers a few bells and whistles that are not in the free version, but the free version provides very adequate protection.

There are plenty of antivirus programs available--free and paid. Most of the paid software (Norton/Symantec and McAfee notably) is such a resource hog that you will soon turn it off so your computer will run better. Most free antivirus software is worthless at best and some are malware themselves. You have to research via reliable sources such as CNET, PC magazine, etc. CNET rates AVG Free as a "Best Download" antivirus product.

AVG is a very large operation and usually upgrades their database for new threats before most paid packages have figured out how to kill them. The database is upgraded daily and, as I said before, the database is the same for free or paid.

AVG has offices in the US, Netherlands, UK, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Germany and Ireland. Paid business-class antivirus software is the core of their business and they provide the free version just to keep malware from proliferating. In fact, AVG has one of the largest development staffs devoted entirely to antivirus software. For companies like Norton/Symantec and McAfee, antivirus software is a sideline. Antivirus software is all AVG does.

John J. Desmond · Post by **John J. Desmond** » Sun, Apr 26 2009, 5:01PM

Hey,

What do you guys think about Mozilla Firefox being better about warding off online problems than IE? I was told, and have switched to, Mozilla seems to produce less hazard than IE. I haven't seem to have as many problems. True or not? I also use AVG Free, Spybot, Ad-Aware, CCleaner. I tried ZoneAlarm but grew tired and weary of all the popups asking for permission to allow access for everything. Comments are totally warranted here. You guys seem to know more about computers than I do.

John

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Mon, Apr 27 2009, 5:28AM

In a browser-to-browser comparison, Firefox is said to be better than Internet Explorer. Those comparisons are, of course, without any additional malware protection.

These days most antivirus programs also have browser protections built in and that sort of nullifies the comparison. That said, however, IE is more prone to successful attacks than Firefox.

Regardless of which browser you use, antivirus software is a must.

Dennis G. Blackburn · Post by **Dennis G. Blackburn** » Wed, Apr 29 2009, 3:30PM

I had a major "hit" yesterday.

It came from an application on FACEBOOK.

The problem wiped out all the components on my AVG FREE 8.5. I got rid of 90% of the problem with SpyBot search & destroy. Then downloaded the components back in AVG and ran it - getting rid of a few more things. Then downloaded Malwarebytes-anti-malware at the suggestion of my local computer tech. That cleaned up the rest of the mess along with my computer tech coming over and doing those things that computer techs do.
Whew ! My good ole dell Inspiron lives another day.

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Wed, Apr 29 2009, 3:35PM

OUCH!!!

You gotta stay off of "those" sites Dennis.

Greg McCorkill · Post by **Greg McCorkill** » Thu, Apr 30 2009, 9:57AM

Thanks for all the replys.I bought this computer in jan from a local computer store when my old systems mother board went bad.I had it loaded with xp and my other programs.the techs at the store recomende and loaded avg.The reason i took it back to them was i was getting wierd occerances such as swithing websites by itself.the tech at the comp store then told me it was infected with malware that avg does not protect against and that it would cost around $200 to fix .I have made sure avg ran all udates made available and checked it every day>right now i am looking at whether to jus reformat the hard drive and reload.Any other sugjestions???

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Thu, Apr 30 2009, 10:12AM

Greg McCorkill wrote:Thanks for all the replys.I bought this computer in jan from a local computer store when my old systems mother board went bad.I had it loaded with xp and my other programs.the techs at the store recomende and loaded avg.The reason i took it back to them was i was getting wierd occerances such as swithing websites by itself.the tech at the comp store then told me it was infected with malware that avg does not protect against and that it would cost around $200 to fix .I have made sure avg ran all udates made available and checked it every day>right now i am looking at whether to jus reformat the hard drive and reload.Any other sugjestions???

Download and run Spybot S&D.

If that doesn't find anything and fix it, download and run RunAlyzer and RegAlyzer from the same site. You can send the results to me via email and I will see what has hijacked your browser (you have a browser hijacker, not a virus).

Kerry Fullington · Post by **Kerry Fullington** » Thu, Apr 30 2009, 10:41AM

Dan,

I am having a problem with a Hi-Jacker also. It is from FastClick and the research that I did on it says it was developed to circumvent the Pop-Up Blockers used by browsers. It doesn't pop-up but inserts itself as a web page when you click a link. It tries to get you to click on their sponsors but offer a Skip Button that will let you continue on. I was able to block the content of the web page but I still must either use the skip button to continue or back out using the browser and continue. Very annoying.
I have the full version of AVG and it hasn't corrected it, I use Spybot Search and Destroy and it hasn't corrected it. I tried Lava Soft Ad Aware and it didn't find anything. I used the Microsoft Malware download and that didn't find anything either. I tried Kaspersky but can't get the applet to run. Java and Java scripting are allowed on my browser.

Any suggestions.

I just downloaded IE 8 and installed. I hope it has better spy and malware protection.

Kerry

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Thu, Apr 30 2009, 11:05AM

Are you scanning for Browser Helper Objects (BHOs)?

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Thu, Apr 30 2009, 11:14AM

Take a look at this website: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm? ... 579&page=1

One more thing is to look at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file. The only entry it should have is 127.0.0.1 localhost unless you have allowed Sypbot D&D to insert known bad sites and redirect those URLs to 127.0.0.1.

If the hosts file contains anything other than the localhost entry, try copying the file to hosts.bak and edit the original to remove everything except the localhost entry.

Thermwood / eCabinet Systems

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