Detecting Spyware?

Post Reply New Topic

Fellow WP'ers,

I haven't spent much time in this section of the Forum and I was wondering if any of you know about doing a scan on your own PC for spyware or if anybody is hacking into your system.

Is there a way to find out if there is any such thing being intruded into your system? I did a search through this Forum and only the Google thingy came up.

Thank-you so much for your help.

Kindest regards,

Papillon

I have the honor of sending you this website

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download-fr ... e/us/frt/0

for the best free spyware detection on the internet. I have been using it for over 4 months with no issues, it has kept my computer clean and will detect and delete any spyware with constant updates.

Enjoy! I heartily recommend it as a honorable and effective method.

Merle

ad-aware by Lavasoft is pretty good.
for viruses, etc., I use something called Avast
both free (I'm a big fan of fre...

Naturally, we are assuming that you are using Microsoft WIndows.

One utility I found quite interesting was TCPView:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx
Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006.

It can be quite revealing to see exactly what connections between you and the internet are actually going on.

There's a lot of things that will detect AFTER the fact.

No substitute for having a good firewall. I'd generally recommend (If you can afford it) a hardware firewall and a software firewall. You could easily find a software one in McAfee or Symantec etc...
Hardware isn't so obvious...

If you have more than one PC in your house, you probably have a switch or a hardware for a wireless network. You should find some fire walling options in the configuration of that.

Also... Your biggest problems once you have a firewall are more likely to be things going out of your computer... not people hacking in, since it's easier and more common these days to set up zombie computers. You might want to have a look at this free utility


Startup Control Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml)

It adds itself to control panel and enables you to remove things from startup. If used, it will probably improve your PC speed overall - especially if you get rid of startups you don't need (Acrobat, Quicktime, MS Office etc...). You can start them when you like instead of having them hook in at startup.

And (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your suggestion, gbollard, but)...

NEVER install anything where someone tells you "this is a nice program!". This is how Trojans generally get around the place. Always check it out with reliable sites and other people. In this instance, "Mike Lin" certainly SOUNDS like "a good guy", but I would not install anything from his pages before getting several confirmations that his is, and that this really is his site, and not a cloned, infected/infecting site.

The standard Windows firewall is adequate for most normal people. That assumes that you use anti-virus (AVG, Avira, etc) to stop things getting in, and are reasonably careful.

I use Avast Antivirus(which is free) and CounterSpy(which has a free trial).

If you're trying to get rid of spyware, it's a good idea to run two or three anti-spyware programs. Using just one will rarely get everything.

As for Norton and McAfee, they're worthless. They slow down your computer and cause more problems than they fix. People write malicious software to try and get around them specifically because they're the most popular.

The guys gave you good tips.

These days, your computer is lot harder to be hack unless you stumble upon a special trojans or have a un-secured Wi-Fi.

The most risky protoculs that is still to exist today is the HTTP. It the matter of who you got the files or what website you visit in the wilderness that may have inject your system with a trojans.

For antispyware: Spybot Search & Destroy

To clean your system, registry and startup: CCleaner

Both are downloadable freeware. Spybot was reviewed and recommended by Consumer Reports, Sept. 2007 p. 38.

I got CCleaner from the Maximum PC Ultimate PC Fix-It Guide disc. Fixing the registry alone speeded things up. Adjusting the startup list also helped. I use it to clean out temp files and cookies every week.

lau Said

Oh yes... good advice.

Don't trust him, or me or lau for that matter - check these things out yourself.

That said, I'm personally satisfied with Mike Lin since I've used his utilities for years and he's had hundreds of recommendations.

Whatever you want to download - check carefully, scan it, do a spyware/malware search for it.

Go to Google and search for;

Mike Lin Spyware
Mike Lin Malware
Mike Lin Virus

Check them all out, read the articles etc...

I was hoping someone would say that. Yes indeedy, trust anyone else, but certainly not me! I'm far too devious.

PS. As well as Spybot (which you MUST be careful about, as there are several sites that will offer infected downloads and amazingly, several that will SELL it to you, lightly disguised to look different.) I also would recommend AdAware (the free version).

Note that there are a HANDFUL of good free anti-virus programs out there, and maybe a double handful of good, free ant-spyware products. There are lots of free downloads of programs that are, at best, useless, plus there are many, many programs you can pay for, that are also useless.

The classic "worst case" is WinFixer, which I came across wearing its "WinAntiVirusPro" hat. The woman who had paid "$46GBP" for it was fairly happy with her purchase - they had sent her receipts for her cash, it occasionally reported things it had blocked (such as HijackThis, which you should read about). The only odd thing she could see was that it kept asking her to renew her subscription (starting straight after she had paid).

I worked on the new version of CCleaner and i have better luck with that than Registry Scanner/

CEO Of Frankenstien Computers INC.

you can get a simple firewall like ZoneAlarm which is very easy to use and alerts its user of intrusions... it also has built in spyware scanners on the ZoneAlarm Pro package

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/home.jsp

very good. that and spywareblaster

I got Hijack This from the Maximum PC Ultimate Fix-It Guide along with CCleaner. I use it once a month to find and remove suspicious files - the ones with a lot of capability (like a browser app) that aren't associated with a known package. The first time I used it I removed about 5 files. Afterward, my system stopped kicking me out of the browser and it doesn't crash as much.

One other suggestion: if your antispyware or antivirus package allows rootkit detection as an option, TURN IT ON. AVG Anti-Rootkit is suggested by Consumer Reports (Sept. 2007 p. 35) as freeware worth trying, although they didn't test it.

It's worth going to the library and checking this issue of Consumer Reports for computer security ideas.

Part of my job is to keep our PCs clean.

My thumb drive has the following tools on it (most have been mentioned here)

HijackThis (which can be found at TrendMicro.com)
StartupList (this shows you want starts up with your PC)
Spybot S&D (make sure it's correct site as mentioned above. (Direct Download from Download.com)
Adaware from Lavasoft (note: a lot of pretenders with this just like Spybot; that is why I always put the company name with this)


Then never ever ever skimp on your AV scanners. The free ones are fine for quick and dirty but they all have flaws and are just not supported or updated like the good ones. They also rarely protect as well.

Symantec's End Point Protection is now the big dog on the block. It takes up less memory than any other product on the market, has more features including a rules based firewall(a must) and root kit detection. This used to be a big system hog but the new version is amazing.

After that - Kaspersky is your best choice.

There are other fine scanners out there but grisoft is not one of them. It has a detection rate of under 80% which puts it down there with McAfee. *ouch*