Adware/Spyware Getting More Aggressive

from the installs-itself,-doesn't-uninstall-ever dept

The makers of adware and spyware products are getting ever more creative and aggressive in taking over computers. Wired News has an article about some adware called Xupiter that many people are struggling with these days. They say that it installs itself without asking for permission, takes over your browser, changes your homepage, takes over your searches, and will even add random words to things you type. All that, and it's incredibly difficult to uninstall. The makers of the program say that it only installs after permission has been granted and they offer an uninstaller. However, people have said both things are not true. I'm guessing that most of the people who discovered it was installed without their permission got it by downloading some sort of file sharing application that had it bundled in.
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  • identicon
    Chris, 30 Jan 2003 @ 9:59am

    No Subject Given

    My wife managed to get this on one of our computers. I think it came from an electronic greeting card. Ad-aware did not clean it. I had to go through the registry manually and delete every key that made reference to it.

    BTW, Zone Alarm caught it when it tried to phone home. Even though I have a hardware firewall protecting my network, I have the free version of Zone Alarm on every PC just to catch any unauthorized outgoing traffic.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 30 Jan 2003 @ 12:00pm

      Re: No Subject Given

      ad aware hasn't been updated in months. Try spybot search and destroy, a TechTV favorite:
      http://security.kolla.de/

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2003 @ 8:27am

        Re: No Subject Given

        As of this past Monday, January 27, they've released a new version of Ad-aware, version 6. They're apparently selling the for-pay version now, but attempts to download the free version just get you a messagebox promising that the download will be available in Febuary.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2003 @ 12:47pm

    No Subject Given

    a cool site about zupiter and getting rid of it is and.doxdesk.com/parasite/xupiter

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2003 @ 12:48pm

    No Subject Given

    I meant and.doxdesk.com parasite xupiter
    WITH the spaces

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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