Spywares, viruses and trojans are everywhere on the Internet, you have to be very careful to avoid them.
Prevention
- Keep Windows up-to-date, check for updates at least once a week using windows update, or even better set Windows Update to be launched automatically everyday
- Use a firewall preferably with stateful packet inspection, like the one included with Windows XP, ZoneAlarm (Free) or Kerio Winroute Firewall 6 which is a 30 shareware trial.
- Use 2 or 3 Spyware removal utilities such as (because none of them can catch them all):
- Windows Defender Beta (Free)
- Spybot Search and Destroy (Free)
- Adaware (Free)
- Use an antivirus and keep the virus definition database updated.
- Get Firefox to browse the web along with flashblock and adblock extensions to block most of the ads and popups if you wish.
- *Be very careful with this* Stop any Windows Services you don’t use (but don’t stop any that you aren’t 115% sure what they do, some are required for your computer to work). See : Windows XP Service Configuration
- Never execute a file you don’t expect to receive (ie, by E-mail)
- Nothing is free (generally), so don’t accept any deals, softwares or offers that feels too good to be true, they aren’t
- Don’t read SPAM E-mails (they can contain viruses or spywares)
Detecting presence of badware (spyware, malware and such)
- Many popup windows when Windows starts or when you browse the web
- New search bar in Internet Explorer
- Can’t change your browser homepage (browser hijacking)
- Your computer gets very slow or gives you error messages
- Check running programs and verify if they are bad
-
Using Process explorer, you can see all running programs and processes.
-
Then go to Task List Programs or
Windows Process Library and make sure all programs are
good and supposed to be running. If you can’t find a process, use Google, you should be able to find some information about it.
-
Then right click on the bad process and Kill it (that doesn’t remove the spyware, it just stop it for now.)
-