How Many Problems Does Spyware Cause?
from the too-many dept
While most of this article covers standard ground about anti-spyware legislations and software programs (though, oddly, it does not mention the two most popular spyware programs: AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy), at the very beginning it notes two interesting tidbits on the impact of spyware. Dell claims that 12% of their calls now involve questions about spyware (meaning it's good that Dell has changed their "don't talk about spyware" policy) while Microsoft claims that 50% of PC crashes are actually due to spyware. While this might seem like a convenient out for Microsoft (whose machines certainly crashed plenty in the time before spyware), it does indicate just how troublesome spyware is on many computers. The worst part isn't just the problems it causes, but the fact that most users have no idea that it's even on their machines at all.
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Install base of several thousand VPN users.
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spyware
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HP printers come with spyware
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Re: HP printers come with spyware
Dan
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Re: HP printers come with spyware
Which is why people who actually know what they are doing use FreeBSD and not the cobbled together GNU/Linux.
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Re: HP printers come with spyware
I think thats part of the linux's appeal to their end users ...
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spyware problems
Oh - here's the kicker, none of the 4 programs caught the pop-under. I used "Hijack this" to locate a program in my IE start-up (?) called "smhearts.exe", which looked suspicious... and it was the cause.
I think the biggest problem is the sweeper programs can't keep like the virus scanners seem to be doing...
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Re: HP printers come with spyware
Blaming MS is not the way to go here. MS makes a portion of the system available to other applications (i.e. file associations). This IS a good thing. Now, if a company abuses this privledge, it's not MS' fault. The company producing the application SHOULD make certain options available to the consumer and NOT make assumptions of what those choices might be.
That said, I am NOT a MS fan. Never have been, and most likely, never will be.
~Psydr
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Re: Re: HP printers come with spyware
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My sister had problems
My sister started having problems with her system. Since I had only just reinstalled Windows and everything else a few weeks before it was nuts. A message kept popping up saying that it couldn't connect to the server and wouldn't say what program was trying to connect nor which server it was trying to connect to. It would pop up hundreds of times making it impossible to do anything at all with her computer. She is on dial-up and not online which is why it couldn't connect to the server. I downloaded Spybot S&R and Adaware and their latest updates and ran over and installed and ran them. There were around 20 spyware programs on her system causing crashes and slowing her system down. Her antivirus even found one of the program and called it a trojan but couldn't keep the thing from coming back after it was removed. I quarentined the spyware and all of her problems have gone away. I told her to update the spyware removal tools every now and then and have them check her system. It's totally nuts that companies think that they can install buggy and spying non-removable programs on a system that is not theirs without the owners strict understanding permission. I think spyware should be illegal because it causes major problems and eats up CPU cycles and therefore costs the owner of the machines money because it takes longer to get any task done. May spyware rot in HELL!!!!
Dan
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a spyware caused by Norton!
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Re: a spyware caused by Norton!
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dso exploit
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Spyware can completely ruin a PC...
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