Spyware

[bigbull]

[B]If someone is giving away a program to stop spyware, how can I be sure that the program is not spyware itself?

[Goslow unplugged]

You cant.
but you can download it from a reputable site after reading and researching it.
----------------------------------------
BIG
BLUE If you don't like those kinds of thrills wait until the software is "out of" beta.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by bigbull@Dec 5 2003, 03:46 PM
[b]If someone is giving away a program to stop spyware, how can I be sure that the program is not spyware itself?

One way to check is to download; if available, the source code for the app and examine the code yourself, ofcourse you need to know what your looking for also.
You can examine 1 piece of software with another.
You can run an application level proxy to restrict any outgoing connections without your permission, or password, so even if ANY spyware wants to spy on you, it needs permission, password, to connect to the network to transmit it's collected data. If you restrict spyware from phoning home, then who cares about spyware, its useless in its intended purpose if it is unable to transmit that data back.
I can care less if spyware is on my system; collecting everything about me, if i have rendered its ability to send that data back to its collecting servers.
You can also check on spyware watcher sites for known apps to contain spyware.

[Guest]

go to download.com ....search "in downloads"
type in "spybot"

look for a program called Spybot Search & Destroy.
That's what I use and it seems to work well.

Quite user-friendly too

[locustfurnace]

There is a rather large listing of spyware tools on this site, pinned at the top of the forum. Spybot works good, but does and has missed some spyware on machines i ran it on. So it might be good to run atleast 2 variances of the utilites.

[Guest]

I tried running both ad-aware and spybot on my machine...
I ran ad-aware first...after it completed..I ran spybot...
turns out..spybot detected some of the files from ad-aware as spyware and wiped them out
:lol: So I just removed ad-aware and have kept spybot ever since

[Goslow unplugged]

Originally posted by Guest@Dec 17 2003, 10:06 PM
I tried running both ad-aware and spybot on my machine...
I ran ad-aware first...after it completed..I ran spybot...
turns out..spybot detected some of the files from ad-aware as spyware

Prolly spybot just detected files you had removed & quarantined using ad-aware as I've never seen/heard of ad-aware installing ! ! spyware.
Ad-aware would be more user friendly than Spybot-search & destroy last time I used spybot it had a bug that if you changed your mind about deleting files and clicked no in the dialog box that asks you whether you want to remove the files or not it would go ahead & remove them anyway ,lol, so make sure you only tick the files you want removed (no second chance) and make backups of your files/registry.
The above bug may well have been fixed by now Spybot & Ad-aware are both good freeware :) products spybot has more frequent spyware reference file updates
----------------------------
BIG
BLUE If you don't like those kinds of thrills wait until the software is "out of" beta.

[locustfurnace]

While i was Demo'ing out Armour2Net's, firewall utility. i ran its built in spyware checker and it had found 3-4 that spybot has missed. since i just ran spybot before installing installing the demo of Armour2net, it was interesting to see what spybot missed.
Have not run either programs in a long time, so might have to go get infected with spyware and run tests with the both of them again.

[Goslow unplugged]

Originally posted by locustfurnace@Dec 18 2003, 01:29 AM
While i was Demo'ing out Armour2Net's, firewall utility. i ran its built in spyware checker and it had found 3-4 that spybot has missed. since i just ran spybot before installing installing the demo of Armour2net, it was interesting to see what spybot missed.
Have not run either programs in a long time, so might have to go get infected with spyware and run tests with the both of them again.

Sometimes it pays to run the spyware removing utilities once & then reboot and run them again to see if they pick up more dregs.
----------------------------
BIG
BLUE If you don't like those kinds of thrills wait until the software is "out of" beta.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by Goslow unplugged@Dec 18 2003, 02:43 AM
Sometimes it pays to run the spyware removing utilities once & then reboot and run them again to see if they pick up more dregs.

yes, possibly. But since Windows is just one of many OS's that i run, i dont worry to much about the dreaded spyware/virus/trojans/worms have-to-reboot-when-installing-programs side too much. Since out of the many dozen OS's I run, Window is the ONLY OS to be afflicted via these nastys.
I guess thats just a bonus & reward to the Windows user-base, or possibly "buried treasure" inside each win-tel box!