Mark Cahill
10-17-2004, 11:44 AM
I've had several compaints about RT serving annoying popup ads lately. The problem is that we're not currently serving any pop ups. If you get pop ups from this site, you've got an adware/spyware problem. Here are some tips for fixing the problem:
First, and explanation of what Adware/Spyware is. These are programs that are loaded onto your machine which will track your online movement and report back to the software maker, replace ads with ads of their own, or hijack your search or homepage to one of their choosing. You can pick this software up just about anywhere, but it's usually loaded along with some seemingly innocuous program, such as "Add Smilies to Your Email (#$110) " or "Increase Your Dialup Speed". Yesterday, I even saw one Adware package that was marketed as an Adware Killer!
What you can do:
Don't download add on software if you don't know what it does or who it's from. Esp. avoid "search toolbars" - if you really need a search toolbar, use the Google toolbar - it's the best out there, has a pop up blocker and is spyware free.
Run Lavasoft AdAware once a month or more to remove any of these programs that get installed. It's free and available at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ - be sure you click the "update definitions button each time before you run to download the latest.
Run Spybot Search and Destroy - it tends to pickup anything that AdAware misses. This often requires a reboot to get the nasties that have loaded into memory... Get it for free here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html
If those two don't do the full job, you're going to need someone to clean out some nasty registry entries. If you're in Central Mass or the Bedford/Burlington area, I can do it, otherwise most competent computer shops can get you fixed. Plan on spending about a hundred bucks...
There are numerous web forums that deal with this issue. A couple of good ones include: http://forums.spywareinfo.com/ http://forums.tomcoyote.org/
Other symptoms of AdWare/SpyWare infection are really slow computer performance, frequent system error messages and crashes.
This information if provided as a public service to the RT community. If you're not computer savvy and think you have a problem, get someone to help you, rather than taking a chance with your machine.
First, and explanation of what Adware/Spyware is. These are programs that are loaded onto your machine which will track your online movement and report back to the software maker, replace ads with ads of their own, or hijack your search or homepage to one of their choosing. You can pick this software up just about anywhere, but it's usually loaded along with some seemingly innocuous program, such as "Add Smilies to Your Email (#$110) " or "Increase Your Dialup Speed". Yesterday, I even saw one Adware package that was marketed as an Adware Killer!
What you can do:
Don't download add on software if you don't know what it does or who it's from. Esp. avoid "search toolbars" - if you really need a search toolbar, use the Google toolbar - it's the best out there, has a pop up blocker and is spyware free.
Run Lavasoft AdAware once a month or more to remove any of these programs that get installed. It's free and available at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ - be sure you click the "update definitions button each time before you run to download the latest.
Run Spybot Search and Destroy - it tends to pickup anything that AdAware misses. This often requires a reboot to get the nasties that have loaded into memory... Get it for free here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html
If those two don't do the full job, you're going to need someone to clean out some nasty registry entries. If you're in Central Mass or the Bedford/Burlington area, I can do it, otherwise most competent computer shops can get you fixed. Plan on spending about a hundred bucks...
There are numerous web forums that deal with this issue. A couple of good ones include: http://forums.spywareinfo.com/ http://forums.tomcoyote.org/
Other symptoms of AdWare/SpyWare infection are really slow computer performance, frequent system error messages and crashes.
This information if provided as a public service to the RT community. If you're not computer savvy and think you have a problem, get someone to help you, rather than taking a chance with your machine.