The future of spyware.

It is only a matter of time before Firefox and Opera become targets of opportunity for the nasty people who dream up this stuff, both viruses and spyware/malware. The jerks who design this junk are very intelligent, persistent, and clever. They will continue to write more sophisticated and hard to eradicate spyware as time goes on.

Its going to take the combined efforts of software designers and engineers (are you listening Bill Gates, et al), the antispyware and antivirus product programmers like Norton, Ad-Aware, and all similar companies, plus some help and the attendent regulation and snoopiness from the government  :smileymad: to start to get a handle on this problem.  Even cell phones and their networks (thats the scary part) have the potential to be affected by viruses and spyware, so Uncle Sam is bound to get involved eventually.

Perhaps Bill Gates and his partners in complacency are starting to understand that they could make a fortune from a "killer" application  that would attack and destroy these nasty buggies before they can even cross the portal. Instead they have had to go back and update every release because it has flaws or weaknesses  that can be exploited by the bad people. I know not a whit about programming or writing code, but It just doesn't make sense that they can't get a pre-emptive handle on this situation.  

 Any improvments won't be worth a darn unless the end user has enough sense to have a firewall and antivirus product installed, plus several spyware programs. These latter programs work independently and shouldn't interfer with each other. And these won't do any go if the user doesn't take a couple minutes EVERY DAY to look for updates on all the products. In spite of that, I still got Adware CDT from somewhere, even though I have NIS 2004 which includes antivirus plus the latest versions of Ad-Aware, Spybot S & D, and Spyware Blaster, all up to date. Thanks to the helpful people here I was able to get of that pest in short order. Thanks for listening to my rant!!

I have been using Internet Explorer for over 8 years - but I have received only the rare virus, and the occasional spyware (other than cookies).

Any infection I have received so far has easily been eliminated by my antivirus/anti-spyware.

However you may indeed have more serious problems if you open unknown attachments, surf risky web-sites... or neglect to have an anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall installed.

So with adequate precautions (as with anything else),  IE is safe.

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@SpyWar wrote:

Spyware is rampant. It is quickly becoming the number one p rob lem for computer users. With the government getting more involved with new legislation and stronger enforcement of present laws, new anti - spyware technologies emerging, and more stringent self - regulatory policies, there is hope.

 

What do you think?

 

 

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Congratulations to everybody...Everyday there is a new user and many with no knowledge of PCs or Internet experience.  A person could have decades of experience and every day I learn something new. 

SpyWar, this is a very good example for the use of these discussions, thanks for this thread.  Some users have contacted me privately and expressed many thanks for these discussions and how they achieved solutions to their problems. 

I Thank everyone for their Help and permitting me Help others, too.

Nelson

Nelson--

I too was sold on Ad-Aware and Spybot-S&D until I downloaded the 30-day trial version for Spy Sweeper at www.webroot.com. I always run both since one alone does not clear all spyware. I ran both, cleared all the spyware found and then ran Spy Sweeper. It found another 32! that were not picked up by these two programs. The best feature though is that you can set options so cookies and adware never gets through IE.

Here's what computer expert Walt Mossberg, who writes an advice column for The Wall St Journal, said recently:

(I am sold and will buy it when the trial period expires).

--Bill 

Hi Nelson--

I know what you mean!

Spy Sweeper gets along fine with Norton Internet Security 2005 which I have installed but am thinking about switching to PC-cillin by TrendMicro .

http://www.trendmicro.com/en/home/us/personal.htm

Merry Christmas,

--Bill

You might check Walt Mossberg's work at The Wall Street Journal's Personal Technology Columns:

http://ptech.wsj.com/

He's been writing for quite some time. Check out his column each Thursday in the Journal--you might learn something like I have.

--Bill