SPYWARE

[questioner]

DID YOU KNOW THAT THIS MESSAGE BOARD PUTS SPYWARE ON YOUR PC.

[Todd W. White]

I use Panda's Firewall and Antivirus - the BEST in the business, and it hasn't infected mine...

How do you KNOW that you got it HERE?

[AllanCT]

Yeah it does and Adaware gets rid of it.

No biggy.

[Altec19]

"Spyware" is a very broad term. Can someone be a little more specific about they've found? Both AdAware and Spybot will itemize after scanning.

Thanks.

[MikeInNH]

This site has a few problems with POP-ups. My home PC crashes all the time when on this site. It happens when ever some background process is run by one of the pop-ups or the Advertisements. Take a look at the display box at the bottom of the IE screen. About every 5 seconds you'll see some process being run that downloads something onto your computer.

Also my virus protection software every now and then warns me of a Virus trying to be loaded onto my system. Not all the time, just every once in a while this happens.

The Spybot (and such) software look for specific cookies and files that it knows as known spy software. It's NOT just looking for cookies. It's looking for specific cookies.

As a test I ran Spybot and cleared out any spy software on my system. I then opened up IE and came directly to this sight. Waited about 10 minutes and ran Spybot again. Spybot found some Spy software called Advertising.com AND Commission Junction AND FastClick and HitBox.

[Altec19]

These are all likely tracking cookies used by the people that place the banner ads at the top of these web pages. They may be considered spyware but are generally pretty benign compared to some of the junk floating around the net. Do I allow them on my PC? No.

If you use Internet Explorer 5.5 (I believe) and newer, try this:

1. In the browser click on Tools, Internet Options.

2. Click on the "Privacy" tab and then the "Advanced" button.

3. Check "Override automatic cookie handling" and either "Block" or "Prompt" for both First- and Third-party cookies.

4. Click "OK" twice to finish.

Now when a web site attempts to set a cookie you will either be asked if that's okay -or- it will automatically be blocked depending upon what you chose in step 3 above. If you chose "Block", whenever a web site attempts to set a cookie there will be a little icon appearing on the bottom right border of the browser that looks like a white minus sign in a red circle in front of an eyeball. If you actually *need* a particular site's cookie, double click the "eyeball" icon then *right-click* on the name of the cookie you need. Choose "Always allow" to permit this particular cookie to be placed on your computer.

Be aware that some sites won't function correctly without their cookies. You will then have to allow a cookie for that site (as above) or surf elswhere.

My apologies for the long winded post. Hope this helps.

[Altec19]

I just went to "my profile" for this site and found that they talk about deleting cookies, etc. if you have problems logging in. This tells me that if you block all cookies as described in my previous post, you may need to allow the *one* cookie that this site requires. It will probably be the cookie whose name begins with http://www.hostboard.com. This is okay to do since the spyware cookies use other names as mentioned in an earlier post.

Later . . .

[MikeInNH]

I've never seen anything BAD from the cookies that load on to my PC from this website. It's more of a nusence then anything else.

Your solution to stop the cookies works SOMETIMES...The option settings can and are changed by pop-ups all the time. I can't tell you how many times I've done exactly what you've stated then only to have some pop-up come along and set my options to something other then what I want. Microsoft has yet to address any of these security issues.

[Altec19]

Cookies aren't inherently evil. They have very legitimate uses. Unfortunately, they can be abused. It is not uncommon to use them to track web browsing habits among other things. Personally, I don't care to reveal any of my habits to an unknown entity.

Obviously if the cookie settings are unknowingly changed they will work differently then expected. Popups and their associated code could cause this. Like cookies, I don't allow popups on my PC either. There are a variety of effective (and free!) programs to prevent popups. The Google Toolbar and PopThis! are a couple of examples:

http://toolbar.google.com/

http://www.mathies.com/popthis/

Don't confuse a Windows Messenger Service window with a popup ad. (And no, WMS has nothing to do with MSN messenger which can also be used for other kinds of mischief.) While popups and WMS can both be annoying, WMS is a legitimate Windows NT/2K/XP service that has been subverted by the popup people. Just go to the Control Panel and disable this service. It is going to be disabled by Microsoft in an upcoming service pack anyway. Also, there is another service pack for Internet Explorer due out Q1 2004 that (finally) builds a popup blocker into IE. But, no need to wait till then. You can surf *almost* popup free right now with tools that are free for the installing.

And no, I don't work for any of the entities mentioned above.

Later . . .

[Todd W. White]

Thanks, guys, for all of the helpful answers - I hope it helps this fellow....