Recently I've had a few computer problems, and I look to fellow flooblers for some advice. I'm a little clueless when it comes to this topic.

It seems like I've been getting more pop-ups lately. I'm less annoyed by them than most people are, but recently, they even seem to come up when my browser is closed, and am away from the computer (I have cable and am always connected). There also seem to be many strange new types of pop-ups. A new wave of pop-ups has come to warn me about a "virus" on my computer. I don't trust such pop-ups; I get the feeling that they're really giving away viruses instead of protection. I've also been getting more download requests than usual. Many seem to take longer to close, perhaps because they are still loading.

What really prompted me to post this is the fact that my browser started going painfully slow today. For the sake of thoroughness, it started the same time as when this strange "searchbar" installed itself and appeared at the bottom of my browser. It's probably some kind of Microsoft update, but I don't trust it (not that I completely trust Microsoft).

I might post more information later.

Wow, I learned a lot from this experience. Ad-aware is great.

First of all, this site has good information on spyware, and what you should do to try and prevent it. You should start by setting your security settings in your browser higher, and making sure that VB programs need to ask permission before being downloaded. This won't solve all your problems, however.

You should also have a Virus Shield program continously running. The computers in the labs here have a McAffee Shield and that seems to work very well. I don't know of a good free one, though.

Pop-up blockers don't appear to help. I have Google's pop-up blocker working and I used to still get plenty of trojans from this site and others.

A fire wall like ZoneAlarm won't stop trojans from being dowloaded, but can limit the damage they can do once they're in. I keep my computer clean with AdAware, and still I get .exe's trying to access the internet and being blocked by the firewall.

Finally, if your homepage has been hijacked the spyware removal programs might not catch it. HiJackThis Is a good program to find out whether you have evil things lurking in your registry, but if I remember you have to go through the results by hand, or post them to a forum such as this one.


That's all my advice from hours of trying to cure similar problems. I hope the links work. On another note, I haven't been getting any pop-ups from Perplexus for several days now. Has levik cancelled them?? I know my donation attempt didn't work, so it can't be from that...

It's an ongoing battle, and I don't think that there is any way to perfectly block yourself from these trojans. I just had my homepage hijacked again (after only visiting Perplexus), so things are obviously getting through McAffee's virus shield.

On one of those sites I listed you can find a whole host of different spyware blockers, spyware eliminators, registry scanners and the like (you may have to do a little searching). This entire arsenal probably won't solve everything, but may make things significantly safer.
Now if only someone would condense all of them into one easily excecutable exe...

Right, but the problem here is that these trojans are being downloaded automatically, Gamer - like I said above, I had my homepage changed just by visiting Perplexus.
(Apologies if you understood this already, I was just being clear.)

I would be pretty sure that "spy deleter" would not delete them but add more on if they were given by a spy program.

Sam's advice up there is pretty good. Additionally, you could get Ad-aware or Spybot Search and Destroy, but they won't solve the problem on their own. But first, you should click on the first link Sam gives.