View Full Version : Questions about AdWare


Elios
Sun, 14th Sep '03, 9:57am
Given all the hype with law suits and all revolving around downloading music on the internet, I've decided to give it a rest for now. Even though I do it on a small basis, I figure for now, why keep it up even though I probably stand no chance of anything happening.
That said, I've removed the P2P program I had on my computer. I then went and ran AdWare. It found all those other annoying programs that had gotten installed on my computer and removed them. I continued to get pop up ads however. I have a Norton Firewall and it blocks the type of pop ups that accompany sites like SP. However I still get other kinds. I think they call themselves "Windows Messenger Service" or something like that. So I ran Adware again. And it found more programs and removed them. I ran Adware again a third time today, and it found yet two more.
How come it keeps finding new ones? Any software left on my computer are all bought from a store. Nothing on my computer now has been downloaded.
I've updated my anti virus, which is Norton and run it. Found nothing. I've checked my harddrive and there are no folders that are unfamilar or anything. Could there be a program somewhere on my computer that is hiding and reinstalling something everytime I try and remove stuff?

Lazy Bonzo
Sun, 14th Sep '03, 11:37am
Some of the pop up programs duplicate themselves when deleted (there was one such in kazaa) and need to be deleted through dos. Look in your startup configuration and see what's loading that shouldn't be. If there's nothing unusual there then I don't know, soz.

Morgoth
Sun, 14th Sep '03, 12:13pm
Well in the manual of KaZaA LiTe is a text about changing your hostfile.
You just add the URL of the pop-ups, if you know where the popups come from, and then change the IP to the IP of your own comp, 127.0.0.1.. Thats the localhost address.

This way the popup program will search for the pop ups it needs to download on your own computer, it wont find any and then just stops running, or worse...

chevalier
Sun, 14th Sep '03, 1:39pm
You need to disable your IP messenger service. Read here on how to do this:

http://pages.zdnet.com/r.kent/art/id77.html

See how it's easy? Just a few steps in MyComputer. And they offer programs for $20 that will graciously automate the process for you :rolleyes:

The most annoying thing is that the overwhelming majority of IP messages offer you the way of blocking such messages. It's like receiving a 'stop spam' mail daily.

Pac man
Sun, 14th Sep '03, 5:04pm
I continue having problems with spyware myself, regardless of my firewall, Adaware AND Spybot. Sometimes a popup appears right at the moment i post a message, very annoying. I check my system regularly and kill every tracking cookie i can find, but one or two days later they simply come back.

A lot of times it are popups that offer you programs to kill popups, go figure.

Dragonfly
Sun, 14th Sep '03, 7:16pm
I had a problem about a year ago with popups appearing when I was playing my game. It annoyed the hell out of me. I ended up clicking on one of the popups and emailing a nasty letter to the company that appeared in it. They told me which company was resposible and when I emailed them I was finally able to remove the popups with their instruction. The problem originated from downloading a particular music downloading program that starts with the letters Mo. If you don't read the installation agreement really carefully you will get it.

Elios
Sun, 14th Sep '03, 8:18pm
@Chev, now that was pretty cool!
Solves one prob. Though I didn't have an option to disable it, just stop it. According to the properties of it though, there is nothing on my computer that requires it to be running, so it shouldn't start back up again.
However, I still found another program with adware today.

Ahrontil
Mon, 15th Sep '03, 1:46am
Have you installed the free ZoneAlarm firewall yet Elios?