Of Spywares, Malware and Viruses
5 years ago, computing people were just worried about their PC's getting viruses and the millenium bug. I think I've only seen 3 virus attacks from when I started my foray into computing till the year 2000. Just as long as you get yourself one of those anti-virus software, then you're almost sure that you're protected. But that was 5 years ago and the whole situation is now different. Viruses, dialers, spyware, adware, malware or any other wares that they'll develop, they now occupy your machines, dwelling on your hard drives and hiding within your system files. A virus is a virus but what are dialers, spywares and adwares? These are all malicious programs you might get from installing software or browsing internet pages that you surf to and attach themselves to your system without you knowing. A dialer might try to use your modem and dial a number that would charge you for your call. Spywares hide on your system, collect and get data and information from your machine and send these data invisibly to you. Adwares are much like spyware but the information they get is used to choke you with ads, pop-ups, and banners. I spent 2 days formating, installing, formating and reinstalling my OS on the laptop because I mistakenly turned off my antivirus and my antispyware softwares. I suddenly got these pop-ups appearing and knew by then that I got hit. Yeah, I've been hit before. Getting on the net would make my system slow down to a crawl. I did try to squash the spyware by deleting registry keys, DLLs and exe files, running antispyware and antivirus software. They did detect some infected files, deleted them, but never really got rid of the whole thing. The next step was to just format my drive C:/ . I've learned from experience to always split my physical drive to at least 2 partitions, drive C and D. Always keep your personal files on drive D and if you know how to, move your My Documents too. So I just formatted my drive C, installed my softwares and hoped that everything worked fine. But that was not the case. Apparently, one of the software I always install seems to have a spyware. After about 6-8 reformats, I decided to slowly build back my system, installing only the antivirus and antispyware software and some base drivers, and installing Windows SP2! I think that helped since I got it working without hitches again. And I'm back to blogging!
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Comments
Most of the incedent I encounter from my supported team they always made a mistake in their finger to press the website that contain Spywares, Malware and Viruses, one example of this is if you are looking for a Crack Serial key from www.keygen.us but please don't ever think of that site.... Once your inside the site they will force you to accept the ActiveX (Most windows use to their browser 'Internet Explorer').
Well back to the topic, only stuff I can suggest is just use open source. I use CentOS, Ubuntu, SuSE and Slack but my most fav is CentOS and for desktop I use Kubuntu. Once you use it wehew I will say you are in a safe side. (Just get rid of Window$ Aghrrrr!!!)
Posted by: kutch | August 12, 2006 09:37 AM
Posted by: xtian001 | August 12, 2006 09:22 PM