Spyware - Watch Out!

[Essex502]

I try to keep my PC environment - both at home and at the office - as clean as possible but today I downloaded an evaluation copy of a Spyware Checker and was amazed to find 160 Spyware cookies and/or programs on my PC here at the office. Now....working for a major aerospace corp we have a terrific firewall and proxy setup equal to the best in the world outside the "black" program of the government but they provide no security against Spyware. This insideous software can open your computer to outside agencies without your knowledge. Spyware can track your every keystroke - whether or not you save your work or even access the Internet. Your own company can place Spyware on your PC to track what you do. Thinking about writing a "Poison Pen Letter" to your boss and then saying to yourself "Oh fock it, it's not worth the trouble" - well Spyware and keystroke loggers could have already captured what you wrote and can automatically send that info to designated computers for analysis. This is bad, bad stuff. How about a tracking spyware program or cookie that sends a list of all the websites you visited to some other website? This is being done right now.

I encourage all of you to download (preferably buy one of the commercial Spyware Checkers) and check your own systems. I used an evaluation package from www.pestpatrol.com but there are others that are available. If you're an Earthlink customer they have a free Spyware audit program you can use to test your system as well.

Remember - I found 160 on mine and that's with every safeguard except Spyware checking including using Spybot Search and Destroy which only found 10 issues.

[Havasu Dreamin]

I had 113. Deleted all of my cookies and they were all gone. http://www.lasvegashotboats.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[KC_Nelson]

ZoneAlarm, don't surf without it.....

[kevnmcd]

I believe I have Spybot at home. I run it regularly.

[digginfordollars]

huhh?

Ad-aware is what we use company wide. We have every PC in our casinos scanned every Tuesday and Sunday night.

[RiverLife]

I use Ad-Aware and Spybot at least once a week, and I have Norton Antivirus. Is that not good enough?

[Essex502]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KC_Nelson @ June 18 2004, 10:27 am)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">ZoneAlarm, don't surf without it.....[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
KC - I have used Zone Alarm since installing DSL 2 years ago. These are cookies left on the PC from the websites visited or by popups spawned by the websites...tested the home PC and had 77 THROUGH Zone Alarm. The corporate firewall, as I said, is state of the art for aerospace and defence contractors and still these tracking cookies were present.

[Essex502]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (kevnmcd @ June 18 2004, 10:35 am)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I believe I have Spybot at home. Â*I run it regularly.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
SpyBot didn't find these....I am now unimpressed with SpyBot after trying PestPatrol.

[Essex502]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (RiverLife @ June 19 2004, 11:54 am)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I use Ad-Aware and Spybot at least once a week, and I have Norton Antivirus. Â*Is that not good enough?[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
I'm not "aware" of Ad-Aware as a product but you can try the PestPatrol free checker and see for yourself if it finds anything beyond what you have. Anti-virus software doesn't - for the most part - find these spyware issues.

Please post your results if you try PestPatrol or some other spyware checker versus what your Ad-Aware finds.

[ctm23]

I had 193 at my work computer.

[RiverLife]

Spybot - 0
Pest Patrol - 9

This was a test on my personal laptop. Haven't run my work PC yet. I wish it would remove them when it finds them though.

[Essex502]

If you purchase PestPatrol it will remove them. $39.95 is what I paid yesterday. I was shocked at what got by SpyBot. All of the ones I've found SpyBot missed.