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Viruses
© 2004 By
Kerry Harrington
A recent study has shown that almost every
computer connected to the internet is infected with an
average of 19 spyware and/or trojan programs running
silently in the background. The owners of these computers
are blissfully unaware that their computers are infected in
any way.
These programs come in various forms - adware, malicious
cookies, browser hijackers, dialers, trojans and worst of
all viruses. Viruses present the greatest danger because
they are written with malicious intentions - the purpose
being to permanently damage the recipients computer.
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Thom Reece
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Trojans can modify .exe files and registry entries, allowing them to
mail information unnoticed from the host
computer to the person or company controlling
the trojan. Contrary to what most people believe
you don't need to be a rocket scientist to write
them. The first virus that was ever written was
a simple happy christmas message written with
good intentions and delivered automatically to
peoples computers.
The more innocent purpose of these programs is
to watch and record your surfing habits, to give
the controlling parties a profile of you -
thereby making it easier for them to deliver
targeted advertising to specific demographic
groups. And the more sinister use, well I
suppose the skys the limit. Some of these people
will stop at nothing in an attempt to make
money.
How can you and I protect our computers and our
privacy from these prying eyes? The first thing
to do is make sure you have all the latest
patches and security updates installed on your
computer. Next you must have a firewall, I would
recommend at least Zone Alarms fr.ee program.
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The next thing I would suggest you do is go
to
http://www.security.kolla.de and download
Spybot - Search and Destroy written by Patrick
M. Kolla. Patrick will allow you to download and
use his wonderful program for fr.ee, if you are
in a position to make a donation I'm sure he
would be grateful. Run Spybot and you may be
surprised at what it finds.
Once you have run Spybot and removed all the
spyware from your computer you will also notice
a red button which says innoculate. I suggest
you click on this button and let it run. This
function will write a HOSTS file to
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc In fact the
HOSTS file can give you control over sites you
want to allow or deny access to and this file
can also be used to speed up your web
surfing.
Now you may want to have a look in your registry
and see what you have in there. First I must
warn you if you want to delete anything from the
registry make sure you know what you are doing
or you may not have an operating computer
anymore. To get an easy to manage report
download and run Hijack This:
http://209.133.47.12/~merijn/files/HijackThis.exe
now carefully look at the report. If you see
obvious entries
with suspicious names like por.ndialer or
shopassistant (just made that up :0)) I think
you could assume you should be safe to remove
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If you want to make sure, do a search using Google, once
again use your judgement - you will find many experts on the
internet who aren't really experts at all. Having said that
I think if you find every listing in Google says eg:
por.ndialer is a trojan, I would then be satisfied
por.ndialer is in fact a trojan and feel confident enough to
remove it.
Another tip which is handy to remember - if you find you
have a trojan, lets assume it's named harmful.exe, you may
find if you simply try to delete it you can't, try to rename
it and there it is, still can't delete it. Shut your
computer down and reboot it in safe mode, your computer is
now running only the bare neccesities and you will find you
can now easily send harmful.exe to the recycle bin.
The final program I suggest you download is SpywareBlaster:
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html once
you have your computer clean, this program prevents the
installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser
hijackers, dialers, and other unwanted pests, blocks spyware/tracking
cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox. It also
restricts the actions of potentially dangerous sites in
Internet Explorer.
Of course I expect you do have Anti virus software
protection on your computer if not I suggest you download
that too, quickly, if you can't afford to pay for Anti Virus
protection, do a
search in Google and at least get fr.ee software.
Not too hard at all is it? :o)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kerry Harrington is the publisher of The Wealth Writer eZine
- This interesting weekly eZine is known for it's useful and informative
articles, written in a personal style by Kerry.
http://www.netwealthgroup.com
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