Spyware...

[Tesseract]

3.

 

We realllly like computers.

 

Whats your best computer?

[aommaster]

lol! Sayonara has 3! I have 7! 3 laptops and 4 desktops!

[Sayonara]

Id rather have performance other than security any day.Mainly because of my safe habits.

Sounds like you do have safe habits, but without a firewall what happens at your ports is completely beyond your control.

 

And without active defensive measures, you'll never detect any unwanted traffic (not to mention the fact that you'd barely notice the extra performance gained by turning off a firewall, unless it's a really badly made one that chews up processor cycles).

 

You could be used as a spam relay and never know it - that's wasted resources.

[Tesseract]

lol! Sayonara has 3! I have 7! 3 laptops and 4 desktops!

 

Wow....I own a computer store so I have 103, yay.

[aommaster]

LOL! He beat me!

[Sayonara]

lol! Sayonara has 3! I have 7! 3 laptops and 4 desktops!

No, 3 people.

 

We have 6 pcs, 2 laptops, 1 Mac ibook thingy, 1 rack server thingy, the gateway thingy and a freevo thingy.

[Tesseract]

Sounds like you do have safe habits' date=' but without a firewall what happens at your ports is completely beyond your control.

 

And without active defensive measures, you'll never detect any unwanted traffic (not to mention the fact that you'd barely notice the extra performance gained by turning off a firewall, unless it's a really badly made one that chews up processor cycles).

 

You could be used as a spam relay and never know it - [b']that's[/b] wasted resources.

 

So your saying I should do what?The thing is that I have to connect to the internet using AOL (like dialup) I dont have a constant connection.

[Tesseract]

No' date=' 3 [i']people[/i].

 

We have 6 pcs, 2 laptops, 1 Mac ibook thingy, 1 rack server thingy, the gateway thingy and a freevo thingy.

 

Does it really matter?*

*yes

[Sayonara]

If you are having no problems at all, then carry on. But the kind of attacks you're vulnerable to are pretty severe so I'd back stuff up to CD-ROM occasionally if you aren't going to monitor your system at all.

[Tesseract]

Anyway Sayonara whats your best computer?

I want detailed explanation and statistics.

 

40000 files scanned.

[Tesseract]

If you are having no problems at all, then carry on. But the kind of attacks you're vulnerable to are pretty severe so I'd back stuff up to CD-ROM occasionally if you aren't going to monitor your system at all.

 

About every two weeks I run an antivirus scan, antispyware and adware scan, defragment my computer, and run evidence eliminator, that erases all recycling bin files and cookies,unwnated things, yadayadayada.

[Sayonara]

About every two weeks I run an antivirus scan, antispyware and adware scan, defragment my computer, and run evidence eliminator, that erases all recycling bin files and cookies,unwnated things, yadayadayada.

I thought you said your Norton A/V expired?

 

My best PC is an AMD Athlon 2200XP... about time I upgraded that I reckon. Has 512Mb DDR memory that I always promised myself I would double and never got around to it... it's time I took the old credit card for a spin I think.

48x CD burner, DVD-ROM, dual 120Gb fast hard drives, 256Mb super duper GeForce 4, 21" flatscreen CRT, yada yada. Dual booting XP Pro and Mandrake 10.

[Tesseract]

I thought you said your Norton A/V expired?

 

My best PC is an AMD Athlon 2200XP... about time I upgraded that I reckon. Has 512Mb DDR memory that I always promised myself I would double and never got around to it... it's time I took the old credit card for a spin I think.

48x CD burner' date=' DVD-ROM, dual 120Gb fast hard drives, 256Mb super duper GeForce 4, 21" flatscreen CRT, yada yada. Dual booting XP Pro and Mandrake 10.[/quote']

I never said it expired, I just said that it was offline.

 

60000 files.

[Sayonara]

I never said it expired' date=' I just said that it was offline.

 

60000 files.[/quote']

No, you said your FW was offline.

 

You said Norton was "no longer functional", which I took to mean that your update subscription had expired (it's good at that).

[Tesseract]

No' date=' you said your FW was offline.

 

You said Norton was "no longer functional", which I took to mean that your update subscription had expired (it's good at that).[/quote']

 

What subscription, I got the full permanent version off the internet.I only meant that the autodetect system of norton was "no longer functional" I can still run scans.

 

NO INFECTION FOUND I JUST FINISHED MY SACN WOOT.

[Sayonara]

What subscription, I got the full permanent version off the internet.I only meant that the autodetect system of norton was "no longer functional" I can still run scans.

When did you last update the virus definitions?

[Tesseract]

When did you last update the virus definitions?

Today right before I ran the scan.Remember.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Just so you know, I have an AV and NEVER had a virus. So Tesseract isn't really better. Probably (like me) he never opens ANYTHING unless he knows what it is. Seriously, I never have opened an attachment from anyone except who I know and I expect it.

[jordan]

that sounds like coolWWW. here is a tool to get rid of it

 

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/cwschronicles.html

 

Thanks' date=' it says my system is now clean. We'll see how long it lasts.

 

 

I think we might be getting to the bottom of your blessed existence.

 

From post #62. Is the problem e-mail in general or were you saying Outlook causes problems too?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

About cookies only being text. My Spybot Search & Destroy says a "tracking cookie" was found. How can text track you?

 

Secondly, as I loaded this page, it popped up saying I was downloading a known threat. "Avenue A, Inc" or something. Could that be in one of the ads on this page?

 

[edit] It's complaining about Avenue A, Inc on nearly every page.

[Sayonara]

From post #62. Is the problem e-mail in general or were you saying Outlook causes problems too?

The problem is e-mail in general. A lot of viruses have double file extensions (for example .doc.pif), and with "show known extensions" turned off by default in windows explorer a lot of people don't see the last extension and will execute the file. Tbh though very few people would know that a .vbs or a .pif was a common virus format anyway.

 

Outlook is fairly secure (as long as you have a good policy regarding preview panes - turn them off in junk mail folder and do not allow autopreview of unknown messages). Outlook Express is a security nightmare. It's a complete mess - full of holes and really stupid about what it will allow to run.

[Sayonara]

About cookies only being text. My Spybot Search & Destroy says a "tracking cookie" was found. How can text track you?

 

Secondly' date=' as I loaded this page, it popped up saying I was downloading a known threat. "Avenue A, Inc" or something. Could that be in one of the ads on this page?

 

[edit'] It's complaining about Avenue A, Inc on nearly every page.

Cookies can be called remotely by images.

 

Sounds bizarre - let me explain:

 

For technical reasons it's possible to specifiy a script as a location for an image, for instance instead of requesting "images/pretty_pony.jpg" an image tag could request "scripts/image_vault.php?id=34021", where 34021 specifies a row in an image table that relates to the same pony image.

This means that the script has to be called to find which image the number 34021 relates to in the database, then find the image and echo it to the browser. Since a script is being run, this means you can do other things like download cookies from the server the image is stored on, or grab information stored in URL variables.

 

So let's say nasty-ads.net is serving images to SFN, they could use this method to deliver and recover cookies, which lets them track your browsing habits, common search terms, whatever they like.

 

The solution to this is to go to your browser's privacy options and customise to:

1) Block 3rd party cookies

2) Block cookies that are not from the originating server

3) If you are really paranoid, block images that are not from the originating server.

[atinymonkey]

Today right before I ran the scan.Remember.

 

Have a quick check with housecall:-

 

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

 

I do, even with firewall/antivirus. It's great*.

 

 

 

 

 

*no Ninjas are involved, so not really great.

[jordan]

Outlook is fairly secure (as long as you have a good policy regarding preview panes - turn them off in junk mail folder and do not allow autopreview of unknown messages). Outlook Express is a security nightmare. It's a complete mess - full of holes and really stupid about what it will allow to run.

 

So autopreview has the same effect as opening the e-mail? If a virus is in an e-mail and Outlook automaticly opens it, the virus gets into the computer? Not a very tough question, I know, but I want to be sure. And if so, how would I turn it off.

 

Sounds like it was a good decision to use Outlook instead of Outlook Express.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I use outlook, and most of my spam is automatically deleted. And there's a lot of spam.