Stupid users and their spyware.

[edro]

Yeah, this guy at work is the king of spyware. I am about to un-install his Internet Explorer and make him use Firefox.

Goodjob dude...

Here is his Run key in the registry.

All the highlighted crap is spyware, except for Apoint and PRPCMonitor, which is a touchpad program and a battery monitor, but I deleted them too because they are not necessary.

I do this so oftern that I can just tell what is spyware and what isn't. Of course with names like zxczxycycz.exe, it is kind of obvious.

Anyone else get sick of killing spyware on users?

 

[Chronoshock]

Its sad to see nice systems crippled by spyware and then the ignorant user complains about it being too slow and spends more money on another system.

 

[Nohr]

I checked for spyware on a friend's computer a few months back because it was pretty obvious it had some. And the MVP Baseball game I originally went over there to help him install probably wouldn't work until I got rid of the crap. Anyway, ran Adaware which found 708 items. Spybot S&D found a further 79. And then I still had to manually remove some IE search toolbar crap that neither could get a fix on.

:disgust:

 

[edro]

The thing that amazes me, is that we use Symantec Anti-Virus (stops a lot of trojans and such), Websense (blocks tons of websites that install spyware), and this particular guy uses the Google Toolbar, so how the hell he got that much spyware, is mind boggling.

 

[Chronoshock]

Originally posted by: edro13
The thing that amazes me, is that we use Symantec Anti-Virus (stops a lot of trojans and such), Websense (blocks tons of websites that install spyware), and this particular guy uses the Google Toolbar, so how the hell he got that much spyware, is mind boggling.

Install kazaa, get 5 spyware programs, probably 20 entires each. Install gnutella, get another 5 spyware programs. Lots of software is bundled with spyware now so your friend probably just installed a handful of p2p type programs and ended up with all that

 

[Gurck]

People like this are mindboggling. Anyone with a few working brain cells and a few hours to learn a few ropes should know better.

 

[Balt]

Originally posted by: edro13
The thing that amazes me, is that we use Symantec Anti-Virus (stops a lot of trojans and such), Websense (blocks tons of websites that install spyware), and this particular guy uses the Google Toolbar, so how the hell he got that much spyware, is mind boggling.

pr0n.

Lots and lots of pr0n.

 

[sillymofo]

Don't be surprised, one of our Tech invited a worm into our network by opening an attachment.

 

[ironcrotch]

Originally posted by: Balt

Originally posted by: edro13
The thing that amazes me, is that we use Symantec Anti-Virus (stops a lot of trojans and such), Websense (blocks tons of websites that install spyware), and this particular guy uses the Google Toolbar, so how the hell he got that much spyware, is mind boggling.

pr0n.

Lots and lots of pr0n.

not just pr0n, backdoor pr0n.

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

Has Congress done any more with that spyware legislation that is supposed to make most of that crap illegal?

 

[Gravity]

No but I married into a family of them.

 

[Shockwave]

Yep. And said dumb user turned around and installed a bunch of junk on my PC while I was away as a joke. It was a screensaver / desktop, which unknown to said dumb user also contained an assload of spyware and redirects. Took me about a week to get all that cleared up, i was seriously NOT happy.

 

[Carbonadium4]

You guys have any way to prevent this ? I was going to start blocking off sites off their history list... wasn't too sure if thats a good idea..

 

[MaxDepth]

Before the recent update to IE (this past Friday), websites were installing spyware through the IE update object models.

Surfing the internet without any precautions is like walking downtown Newark, NJ at 1 AM wearing a shirt that says kick me, I am unarmed.

 

[Shockwave]

Originally posted by: Carbonadium4
You guys have any way to prevent this ? I was going to start blocking off sites off their history list... wasn't too sure if thats a good idea..

At work? Do whatchya gotta do. As I recall, MOST companies have a clear policy on internet usage. If its a problem, deal with it. Block the sites.
Now, the less draconian solution is to do a push to Firefox, or (and I dont even know if this can be done) set up a filter at the entry point to block spam.

 

[Schadenfroh]

slap a limited user account on his ass or her

 

[Bryophyte]

My sister-in-law purposely downloads crap like those "pets" and form-fillers. Drives my brother nuts. She's really really immature and doesn't believe that they could possibly contain a malicious payload. He's constantly having to remove spyware, it's so thick sometimes that the computer just sits there all day and talks to itself while nobody's on it.

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: Bryophyte
...the computer just sits there all day and talks to itself while nobody's on it.

Seriously? I've seen computers with a boatload of spyware before, but never seen anything like that.

Nate

 

[Mr N8]

I used to have about 8 people who were spyware whores. Now, I run the immunize feature from Spybot, and it updates the host file to drop most of the spyware sites, immediately. Also, my Netscreen IDP box drops spyware traffic, once it starts reporting.

 

[eLiu]

*vows never to provide computer support to clueless friends/family...* this thread scares me

 

[Dedpuhl]

At work, everyone gets them (except me). I don't understand it. One lady had a massive amount of Trojans/worms/viruses/spyware/adware/etc on her system. I found out that she frequently visits lyric websites, so that's probably from where it is coming.

My mom constantly gets viruses/worms (dell computer on dialup), but my dad (custom computer on cable) hasn't had any problem. Then again, I built my dad's computer and installed spybot, adaware, zonealarm, NAV, etc.

 

[ugopk]

perverse roommate would complain once in a while that the internet is slow. At first i thought i use BT too much so it hogs all the bandwidth, but turns out he has 32498324 spyware programs on his computer. I started cleaning it for him once in a while but they would always come back.

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: Carbonadium4
You guys have any way to prevent this ? I was going to start blocking off sites off their history list... wasn't too sure if thats a good idea..

yeah,
heres my way of preventing it:

 

[skace]

Spyware king or queen? no, we have spyware communism here

 

[ugopk]

Originally posted by: halik

Originally posted by: Carbonadium4
You guys have any way to prevent this ? I was going to start blocking off sites off their history list... wasn't too sure if thats a good idea..

yeah,
heres my way of preventing it:

pmalik@imploding adm $ uname -a
Linux imploding.com 2.6.5-gentoo #3 Thu Jul 29 11:53:45 EDT 2004 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1400MHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

denys@computer:~$ uname -a
Linux computer 2.6.7 #1 Fri Jul 2 14:55:55 PDT 2004 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux
:thumbsup: