We need an army to fight the spyware!
 

Please we need to form the Anti-Spyware Confiederacy! Anyone know how we can stop spyware legally? To stop it forever without having to buy a new firewall/ other Norton and Panda stuff?

Spybot Search and Destroy is free. Download. Use. Enjoy. Also toss out the crappy half baked never upgraded pos browser from hell otherwise known as Internet Explorer. Go with Mozilla or Maxathon.

Hrmm. Spyware, the bane of my existance. Fortunately, I happen to be the computer expert of my little group of friends.

I recommend a couple pieces of software that will make your life infinitely simpler. The first is Spybot Search and Destroy. www.safer-networking.org is where you can get that excellent piece of software. I couple it with Lavasoft's Ad-Aware since it seems to catch some things Spybot doesn't, but Spybot is better for those who aren't as obsessive as I am. Switching browsers is also recommended. I recommend Mozilla Firefox, and so I order you to use it as well ;-). www.mozilla.org/firefox for that. Firefox is also immune to all Internet Explorer related viruses (a lot of them). Next up on the list is Mozilla Thunderbird (incase you can't tell I'm a fan of their software). Don't bother using Outlook or Outlook Express. Those too are far too virus prone to be safe. www.mozilla.org/thunderbird will replace all your mailclient needs.

A good firewall is always helpful. ZoneAlarm is my personal favorite, I'd stay away from McAfee (since I've had experience with that) but I can't say much for Norton. 'sides, ZoneAlarm is free. Sygate is free as well, but I don't know much about it. I will say this: ZDNet has repeatedly put ZoneAlarm on the top of the Firewall quality list. Don't use AIM/MSN etc. Use Trillian, it'll replace all of them (save some of the advanced functions like voice chat). You'd be surprised how much spyware travels over those things.

Stop using KaZaA. Use KaZaA Lite if you manage to find a copy (they got shut down) or short of that use WinMX. Uninstall KaZaA. Extract the portion of your harddrive KaZaA was on with a knife and burn and piss on them. KaZaA is bad. Good antivirus software is always essential. McAfee/Norton are my preference, though I've heard good things about Panda. Windows XP SP2 comes with an antivirus program, but I don't trust it frankly. Its from Microsoft, end of story.

Thats all I can think of off hand. If I come up with more, I'll edit or tag on a new post.

To find K-Lite, try searching for the installer via normal Kazaa. Normally, it places a copy of the executable installer in your shared folder, so you can probably find plenty of people with a copy. If you don't have normal Kazaa installed, then you're smarter than you look. Try googling it, you'll eventually find a good install of K-Lite. Look into using BitTorrent, too.

Norton Personal Firewall seems pretty good, I never had any trouble with it. I got it in a package deal with Norton Systemworks, and its served me well. But ZoneAlarm is better, since its free and upgrading to Pro is only like $15. Support your software developers!

SP2 comes with a firewall, enabled by default. That means, that everytime a program needs to use the internet, it will temporaily halt it until you give it permission. Annoying? Yes, but any firewall worth its salt will do the same. Just be sure to click the "Do this everytime for this program" option it should give you. Of course, third party firewalls are LEAGUES better, and actually shut off Windows Firewall when installed. That inspires confidence.

Edit: Crap, almost forgot GAIM. Similar to Trillian, but with the SourcForge stamp of approval, and mimics the AIM interface well.

Hrm. I havn't noticed other firewalls disabling the SP2 firewall upon installation. I had to shut down mine manually, so be careful. Running more than one firewall at a time can blow your computer up.

Bearshare or Warez are two I recommend instead of Kazaa-Lite. Sides that, K-Lite switched to Shareaza. Go to Zeropaid.com to find the newest P2P programs.

Instead of using crappy, RIAA-subpoena-inducing programs like Kazaa, why not use a good program like Soulseek instead?

Don't forget my usual suggestions: Bazooka Spyware and Trojan Detector, and Hijack This! Probably Ad-aware too. Trust me. You need ALL of the to detect everything. Ah yes, AVG antivirus is good. Also, Tiny Firewall is a good firewall.

Lots of IE holes are fixed with SP2.

But I thinkt he biggets difference between Firefox and IE is that ONE txt hole. I'm still using MYIE2 (great modified browser), but I remember in IRC once some 8bit folks proved to me how firefox's protection was superior. They linked to a txt that executed a bunch of commands, then reset your computer and fixed itself (this was the good version. the bad version never fixes itself). In firefox, it simply blocked it. Still, until I get MyFirefox2, I'm not switching.

MyIE2 still uses the IE engine, so its basically IE, only with a new interface and some enhancements. I'm pretty sure that Firefox can do most of the features listed, although you might need to download an extension for one or two, or use Thunderbird for the newsgroups function.

I also suggest Opera for a non-IE browser. I don't use it personally, but some of my friends prefer it over Mozilla. To each his own, I guess.

~sniffle~ Thank-you. It makes me happy to know that there are people out there that hate this and know ways to fight it. I had an old computer that was destroyed by spyware.....it makes me sick. I also have another queston, why do web sites/programs do this? Is it just to annoy the living crap out of us?

i don't understand this either. Why do advetisers hack our comps so we see ads for thing no one could possibly need? And whats more, webmasters get paid to do this.