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stella40 -> RE: Spyware and Malware (5/20/2007 2:56:24 AM)
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I'm not a geek or a techie, but I know certain things about computers. One thing I know is you don't get viruses, spyware, malware etc from actually visiting a particular website, but only when you're transferring from one site to another when your computer is sending and receiving data, or (extremely rarely) as a page is loading in your browser. Opening a new blank page in your browser and typing in an address like Collarme is usually much safer than going from another website.
One of the most popular ways to get spyware or malware is to go from somewhere like Yahoo! or Google to an adult-content website or a BDSM website. Yes I know you get software to detect spyware, malware and trackers free from Yahoo! to download, but that doesn't stop you getting such spyware or malware, especially if you have also Yahoo! Messenger installed onto your computer.
Using Internet Explorer appears to have the worst problems. I've found Opera and Mozilla to be much better.
Another smart thing you can do is use Linux in the form of a live CD (such as Knoppix or Overclockix) for browsing adult websites (and doing everything else as well). You get a complete system of programs which you can download from a website (such as www.knoppix.de) and burn onto a CD. Be sure to burn the files you download as an 'iso' image onto a blank CD. All you then have to do is switch on your computer, insert the CD into your CD driver, and the system starts up all on its own, without affecting your hard disk.
On such a CD you get equivalent programs to ones you have under Windows, such as Mozilla as a browser, you got all your IM programs in GAIM, you got Open Office instead of Microsoft Office, Kaffeine instead of Windows Media Player and so on. The system comes with its own firewall and because it's Linux and a different computer system you shouldn't get so much spyware and malware onto your computer. When you've finished, you simply logout, reboot your comuter and start up your original Windows system.
Or you can switch to Linux period. Most spyware and malware will only install itself on a FAT or NTFS file system (used by Windows) but cannot install itself on the ext2, ext3, or reiserfs file systems which Linux uses.
Where does spyware, malware etc come from? I guess it comes from a number of places, from sites which pass on your details to phishing sites, spammers, and I'm sure you also get such stuff from Microsoft, Yahoo!, Symantec, and all the other software companies to get you to update and buy more software. This is why I'm very sceptical about anti-virus software, as I'm sure in many cases it removes viruses and tells you that it's removing viruses but is also putting new viruses on your computer.
I'm sceptical also about installing new software to get rid of such things as spyware and malware because it only gets rid of such software for a certain period of time, or it prevents only the known types of spyware and malware (which is written almost always by hackers) and each time you install new software you not only take up more space on your hard drive but also risk knocking your Windows registry out of sync. And when your Windows registry is out of sync that's when you really start having problems.
The only surefire way of getting rid of all such software as spyware and malware is putting all your files onto removable media such as CDs and DVDs, formatting your hard disk and reinstalling your software from scratch.
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