OT: Popups

[cheryl]

One of our members recently contacted me very annoyed that pop up ads were being displayed here on Brown Cafe. I can understand why he was annoyed, I hate those ads. The problem is that this site doesn't display them. The popups were being generated by an adware infection on his computer.

Just in case this is happening to anyone else here I thought I'd post a links to free resources that I use to maintain our home computers:

Ad-aware - With the ability to scan your RAM, Registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components: http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-200...dlPid=10844457

Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove a multitude of adware files and modules from your computer. Their immunize feature is very good. I don't recommend that you install their teatimer feature, it's overkill and becomes really annoying. http://www.download.com/Spybot-Searc...dlPid=10804822

Windows Defender is a free program that helps you stay productive by protecting your computer against pop-ups, slow performance and security threats caused by spyware and other potentially unwanted software. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Trend Micro Housecall is a free online application for checking to see if your computer is infected by viruses, spyware or malware. http://housecall65.trendmicro.com/

For an anti virus I use NOD32 by Eset. It's unobtrusive, efficient and very powerful. For years I had used Norton and had never realized how much of a resource hog it was. My computer is much faster without it.

[freeloader]

NOD32 is one of the best AV products out there. It's fast and isn't a resource hog. Norton and McAfee are good but they are resource hogs.

Counterspy is another great anti-spyware product. 15 day fully functioning trial, subscription is $20 per year ($40 per year for all pc's in your house). It is highly rated by CNET as well. I use this product and I work for the company (no I'm not in sales).

Anyways, here is a link for Counterspy:

http://www.download.com/CounterSpy/3...dlPid=10823265

And our CEO has a blog that's worth reading to keep the internet community informed and educated:

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/

[brownman15]

get a mac then u don't have to worry about it

[freeloader]

Yeah you do. There are mac threats out there (not nearly as many as there are for the windows platform though). Most notably the fake codec threats, which turn out to be trojans.


http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007...l-pain-of.html

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007...ake-codec.html

[freeloader]

Here's a couple more mac threats, less than a week old:

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001461.html

[scratch]

I started using Trend Micro as my antivirus. It is much better than Norton, in fact Consumer's Reports ranks it far better than Norton and McAfee. Norton is a memory hog, it actually messed up one of my hard drives in my desktop and caused all kinds of problems. Never again. My sons both use AVG, which is shareware, but you get what you don't pay for, and one has some Trojans that got through that. I would steer clear of AVG.

I had used Spybot before too, its shareware and does a lot of good cleaning out spyware. I am currently using Fix-it Utilities8 made by Avanquest. It is a great utilities program that really sped up one of my notebooks that got to be too slow. It also comes with Trend Micro as its AV, you can protect three PCs for $69. I am impressed with it, I highly recommend it.

[freeloader]

When I got my Dell PC, it came preloaded with tons of junk of course. It had Norton on it, and it dragged ass so bad. I removed Norton and used Trend for a couple years and the performance difference was noticeable and significant. I liked Trend and it ran great. Since my Trend subscription ran out a few months ago, I have been beta testing my company's anti-spyware + anti-virus software (it's called VIPRE) and it's working great. I've never used AVG so I can't really comment on it, but I know some people who use it and haven't heard any complaints (or praises either).

[over9five]

Hmmm, I use Spybot, Ad-Aware, and McAfee (free w/Comcast).

Computer changes pages slowly....

Any suggestions?

[freeloader]

Give these suggestions a try:

Dump your temp files, temp internet files, cookies, off-line files, etc.

Defragment your hard drive.

[over9five]

Thanks, I do all that regularly.

Maybe it's me. When you guys click a link, how long till the page changes? Might take mine 5-10 seconds. Am I impatient, or is that way too slow?

I'm thinking of saving some money and going back to dial-up.


Not.

[moreluck]

Over......you gotta stay off the porno sites.....they'll drag you down everytime !!

[over9five]

Actually, the porno sites seem faster.



......uhhh....I was researching them for a project.....yeah, a project...thats the ticket.