Hi MM. I have Norton Antivirus and have no problems with Spybot, so it may not happen to everyone. I really like spybot over some others. I was told that Ad-Ware will remove spyware, but smash you with its own stuff, so I don't use it anymore. Here is another link to look at for spyware info http://www.bulletproofsoft.com/
Anyway, I hope this helps some. BTW- I think this is a good thread to have.
LittleWing

Antonio,

I went to the SpyBot site and downloaded the software; then I ran it. Sure enough, there was a whole bunch of apparently-nasty stuff on my computer which I then removed with the software. Then I scanned with the software again to check--and lo and behold the nasty stuff seems to be gone. Best yet, my computer still seems to work fine. Thank you! You have a done a service to us all here. -OhMike

LW, it could be that you use Norton Antivirus and Madridman uses Norton Antivirus Professional Edition. The latter has an additional module to protect some sensitive files and that may be what is causing a conflict with Spybot.

I haven't heard of Ad-aware bundling other stuff with it. There was a time when it was highly criticised for not updating their 5.X version of Ad-aware for several months. This leave Ad-aware users (even those who had paid for the program) without protection against the lastest threats.

By the way, I don't recommend BulletProof Software at all!!!. They have stolen the datases of Spybot and Ad-aware!!!

Read about it at:

• Lavasoft\'s board
• Spybot S&D website

Always remember to update Spybot S&D before doing the scan.
Also it's a very good idea to use the Inmunize feature. Note that this would only block some of the known threats from getting into your computer. It doesn't protect against unknown ones, but it's a good protection anyway.
-
As some of you seem to be interested in computer security, I'll go ahead and post some more info & recommendations:

Nowadays a personal firewall is as important as an antivirus program. A personal firewall is a piece of software that controls all incoming / outgoing traffic from/to your computer. It parses all the packets being sent/received through your connection and allows/denies connection depending on some rules.

When you use it for the first time the firewall will block everything and you have to grant permission to the applications. Once you've done it, you can almost forget about the firewall. Unlike antivirus software, there is no need to update any databases or engines (unless there is a security but and you need to update the program or a apply a patch).

There are many firewalls available, but my personal recommendation (the one I'm using right now) is Outpost by Agnitum . There is a freeware version and a paid version (Outpost Pro). In most cases the free version is enough.

By the way, for Spanish members of the board, Outpost has a multilingual interface with Spanish as one of the languages available. Check out Ontinet, SL . You can download there all the Spanish documentation and help available.

Antonio,
Yea.Don't have the Norton Antivirus Professional Edition......
With Ad-aware, I was told this by several people, but did not research it more. Still have it on my computer, but don't use it now.
And with BulletProof Software site, this link was given to me twice by 2 people,but since I have Spybot and "The Cleaner" for Trojans), besides my complete Norton package, I didn't do more than look at the site briefly.
And I would like to know what you think about "The Cleaner". I think it's great. It caught many things that Norton didn't catch, including websites trying to write stuff to my registry, and whatever else it was trying to do. It's scary seeing this kind of thing happening. So I applaud you Antonio for trying to educate others here about it.
Can't blame a girl(woman) for trying to help

Wow!!!!Wow!!!

Thank you Antonio!!!!!

I installed Spybot and I was shocked to see how much junk was on my system. I though that I had "collected" some junk on the internet, but the quanity that has been discovered and eliminated by Spybot has been incredible.

Thank you and the German who created the software,

Shawn

Well, about Anti-Trojans program, experts say the best and the most powerful one is TDS-3 . Unfortunately, it's very difficult to use for a non-expert user. Its interface is command-line based. I tried during the evaluation period and I can confirm it's quite complicated.

As for The Cleaner, I haven't tried myself. It is one of the most popular though some people say Trojan Hunter and Bo-Clean are better. You can read more information about them on Wilders.org .

Today's lesson is about the Hosts file.

As you may know, computers on the Internet doesn't "talk" to each other using domain names such as "madridman.com". They use numeric addresses called "IP addresses". They look like "192.168.0.0". Thus, whenever you type an Internet "name", your computer looks up its correspondent IP address which is then used to send/receive data.

The hosts file could be seen as a phonebook. In each line of this file there is an IP address and its correspondent host name. The same way your phonebook has names and telephone numbers. In the host file, they are listed the other way round (ie, number first, then name). For instance:

# This is a maked-up entry
192.168.3.6 www.whatever.com

Where is the trick and what the heck has this to do with security?. Well, there are many malicious websites around nowadays. Some of them will hijack your browser changing the settings so that your are forced to visit them or you are redirected to the websites they want. Some others may even download software secretly to your computer and arrange things so it gets executed (trojans, dialers, etc). Some other will "just" show hundreds of ads (popups, popunders, etc).

You'd think that the safest thing to do would be not to visit them at all. Well, this is where the host file comes into play. The trick is to fool the browser to make it belive the webpage you want to visit is in your computer. There is an special IP address (127.0.0.1) called the "localhost". That address always refers to your own machine and is mainly used for testing purposes. Let's see it with an example:

# The following site is dangerous or show us lots of ads
127.0.0.1 www.dangerous.com

As simple as adding this line (the one beginning with # is just a comment). Now, whenever your computer tries to access www.dangerous.com, Windows will "translate" that to "127.0.0.1" and it will try to connect to that address to show the webpage. However, there isn't such page at that address (remember that 127.0.0.1 means your own computer!!). Thus, instead of wasting time and bandwidth it will just show an error message "404: File not found".

Now that you've learnt how it works, you may be wondering where you can get a list of webservers it's better not to visit. That's easy. A guy at Smartin Designs maintains a list of such servers. You just go there, download the file and copy it to your Windows folder. That's it. There's nothing else to do to make it work.

Note that the list is updated every three months or so. You can subscribe to a mailing list to get notice of a new version of the file.

¡VERY IMPORTANT!: If you use Windows 2000/XP, you have to copy the file in a different folder (WinNT\etc32). Also, there is a bug that slows down the system when using a large host file so don't use it without reading and doing this article.

No more interest in computer security?. Nobody has received copies of the virus that claims to come from Microsoft?. I got a few everyday.

Gee, Antonio! You mean I SHOULD NOT have opened that email from support@microsoft.com and I SHOULD NOT have forwarded it to you and everyone in my address book? And here I thought I was doing a good thing. hehehehe.. Just kidding, everyone. IF YOU SEE/RECEIVE an email from support@microsoft.com just delete it before reading it (if you can). "You'll be glad you did."

Saludos, MadridMan

My "students" doesn't enjoy my lessons. Should I ask for advice at the teachers forum?. :-(

Well, I'll try it with something more fun and interesting.

Do you use MSN Messenger?. Are you tired of the banners you see at the bottom of the contact list window?. There's an easy way to get rid of them.

1.- Find the "links.txt" file which is usually located at the "Documents and settings" folder in Windows NT/2K/XP based systems (even the Spanish version has that folder name.

2.- Open it with notepad and delete all its content.

3.- Open Windows Explorer, select the file, right-click on it and select properties. On attributes, mark the "Read only" check box.

And that's it. Bye, bye banners.

Removing Messenger banners...the Making off

Messenger updates the banners by downloading their URLs every 6 minutes. These URLs are stored in the links.txt file. By deleting its content Messenger won't know where to connect to get the banners. Finally, by write protecting the file you will prevent Messenger from updating the file.