Spyware From Hell, Part 2

Ok, my buddy at work wasn't happy with me cause I dis'd the Yankees in my last post. I'm a long time Orioles fan, there hasn't been much to cheer about for a few years. My buddy's from NYC, so I can't really hold it against him for being a Yankees fan. In spite of that flaw, he's a good friend and a great bowler. By all accounts you would think we really hate the very companies that make the products we spend all day fixing. It's frustrating, for sure. In the end, if the big guys started making perfect products, I'd have to take a greeters job at Wal-Mart. I don't think that's likely to happen anytime soon. Unless Microsoft builds a brand new operating system, from the ground up, with a new core, a write protected registry, and a browser that is stable and doesn't leak, chances are I'll have a job well past retirement.

Rumor has it some of these things will be part of the new desktop operating system, Vista, but I'm not holding my breath. By the time most of us get around to using Vista, Microsoft will be publishing service pack 1, or maybe service pack 2. If Microsoft was really serious about safe computing for it's customers, they would make an operating system that cannot be so easily broken, with anti-virus and spyware protection provided. They need tools that can fix the registry, your average user should never touch the registry..... Ok, that's enough pie in the sky, let's talk more about the Spyware From Hell.

I may not have emphasized this in the original post, but it's not enough to just download and install the antispyware tools. They have to be monitored, updated, and set to scan regularly - daily is the optimum.

Unless you pay for Adaware, you will have to manually update it; updates are several times a month.

Microsoft Antispyware can be set to update automatically, and can be set to scan at set times. Chalk one up for Microsoft.

Spybot can be set to update - when the program is launched. But if you're like me I never turn my computers off, so it just runs in the background. You're probably gonna have to manually update it, several times a month. Spybot can also be set to scan at a regular scheduled time.

Ewido Security Suite has become my favorite. The free version will update automatically for the FIRST 14 days, after that it has to be done manually. I haven't found a way to have it scan at a regular scheduled time.

AVG Free Antivirus will update automatically and scan at a regular scheduled time. It will also play well with other antivirus programs, which can't be said for Norton or McAfee.

If you know, or think you have spyware on your machine, another great tool to get is hijackthis. Get it here http://www.merijn.org/files/hijackthis.zip . This program will scan the system and show you what processes are running, where the executable is for it, registry keys in use, and tons more. It DOES NOT indicate which ones are good and which are bad. It DOES give you the ability to DELETE the bad ones. So I say with much caution, Hijackthis is NOT for the novice, Hijackthis will break windows if it is not already broken. It is very easy to delete something you actually need. Unlike MSCONFIG, which allows you to remove items from the startup but leaves the list there, Hijackthis DELETES the entries and the source files. So I recommend it only be used by experienced computer professionals, and with extreme caution.

Alright, that's enough spyware talk for tonight. More to follow soon.

About The Author John Crawford works as a Computer Systems Administrator for a small defense contracting company in Maryland.