Ad-aware

The October 7, 2002 Time magazine had a moderately interesting article about these programs. The best part of the article is its recommendation that you check out the free Ad-aware program that removes these programs. I tried it and it was relatively painless. Spyware isn't as bad as a virus but it's still annoying.

One person wondered why virus protection programs such as McAfee and Norton don't check for adware. Here's a note from McAfee's Web site.

If spyware is placed on your computer using a cookie, Privacy Service can block the cookie. However, if spyware is placed on your computer during a program download, then it will not be blocked. McAfee.com services do not detect spyware after it has already been installed on your computer.

By design, Symantec Security Response does not provide virus definitions to detect joke, adware, or spyware programs. Such programs are not malicious, and detecting them only leads to unnecessary virus alerts, which could cause you to believe that you have run or received a dangerous program when you have not. If you have received or installed such a program, and you do not want to run it, we suggest that you uninstall or delete it.

Here are comments about Ad-aware that I got from newsletter subscribers. I'm presenting them anonymously so no one is embarrassed by the hundreds of naughty picture links they found ;-) Many thanks to all who replied!

Replies

Funnily enough, I just installed this software recently. On my system, it picked up a few cookies which I wiped, and found one application using the Cydoor advert system which I knew about. It also found one registry key for a spyware system I knew nothing about called Alexa, which I found interesting, as the final registry key was a GUID so you wouldn't recognise it, and it was cunningly hidden inside Windows Explorer's registry settings, perhaps trying to hide from where you would normally look for such things. As a rule I will not allow spyware or advert software on my computer. Of course, when there is an exception, my software firewall (ZoneAlarm Professional) doesn't allow these apps to send the stolen information out anyway :)

I was just getting into CIS studies, and was/am just leaning VB, and had downloaded some trial version flowcharting software, discovered gfi.com, langa list, and adaware. I think I had downloaded realplayer (big offender - now gone) but that was it. For the most part everything I downloaded was education or business oriented. My machine was still polluted with spyware.

I know one folder is Qualcomm's from Eudora, as I run the free version, I accept that as a price for running the free version of Eudora, When I went to try opera they added their own spyware. (Another program now gone from my system)

Before I learned about spyware and shutting down processes, I couldn't figure out why my old P-133 was so slow......it would take over a minute to open NOTEPAD!! It was all spyware! robbing my poor CPU>

Once I learned about adaware and ran it on my new system, I realized that much of what adaware had found and removed were programs I had seen running on my old system, and didn't have a clue what they were .

I haven't used Earthlink for 6 months so I don't know why the first run of 10/12 found 4 Earthlink items. However, some of the Earthlink application files are still on my hard disk.

My only complaint with is that the "RefUpdate" program (used to update the "reference list" seems to have a hard time connecting/finding reference files. Some days it works like a champ, other days I have to many of the servers before it will actually connect and determine whether or not a new reference file exists.

Interestingly, during this run A-A found that I now have Alexa (??). I know that I didn't install it; however, I did upgrade to IE 6.0 on this machine recently. I Googled "IE 6.0 Alexa" and found that the upgrade and SP1 added the key to the registry. Rather strange behavior from MS, IMHO. I was also interested to find that, of the nine components found, there were *seven* that had to do with "sexlist" or "sextracker." I have no idea where these came from, but since I use Pop-Up Stopper from Panicware (highly recommended, BTW), it's possible that these were placed by blocked pop-ups that I never actually viewed. The last component was the ubiquitous doubleclick cookie. Ad-Aware did its duty and cleaned everything up for me. Note that it only found nine components on this run because I use it fairly regularly. I recall my first run, where it found 35 or so components, including adware programs (which I eliminated, of course).

In summary, my experience and understanding indicate that Ad-Aware is a legitimate, effective tool for combating scumware on your machine. My only gripe is that (as of ver. 5.62) there is no way to schedule it to run other than at Windows startup. That's easily solved using the Windows Task Scheduler, however, so it's a really minor issue. I recommend it to all my friends.

I have never received any spam from them nor do they install their own spyware. They are really as good as they seem.

I've not used any of their other products.

That program detected 131 suspicious items from my computer(x_x), and successfully deleted all. I checked all of them before clicking 'remove', and those were all fishy... after removing those, I don't get stupid popup-AD so far.

I installed it and found 41 Registry entries and 18 programs and what a difference it makes to the speed of my system! Incredible!

One file was a nasty and had to be removed from the DOS prompt (Locked by Windows) It was in the Windows\System directory and called IEHelper.dll and I guess it's been helping to slow my system down for some time now!

No surprise, I always lock up my workstations pretty tight, even those already behind a firewall (Opera instead of ie, restrictive settings, Tiny Personal Firewall to ensure ie can't connect, WebWasher, SpamWeasel and NoHTML, and, of course, awareness). Never been surprised by a virus on my own machines even though I don't run AV software.

Scanning finished
==================
Suspicious modules found:0
Suspicious keys found : 7
Suspicious folders found:2
Suspicious files found:11
==========================
Components ignored:0
Total components found:20

1 suspicious registry entry (Alexa) .. deleted

Scanning finished
==================
Suspicious modules found:0
Suspicious keys found : 2
Suspicious folders found:0
Suspicious files found:9
=========================
Components ignored:0
Total components found:11

Scanning finished
==================
Suspicious modules found:0
Suspicious keys found : 2
Suspicious folders found:0
Suspicious files found:35
==========================
Components ignored:0
Total components found:37

Scanning finished
==================
Suspicious modules found:0
Suspicious keys found : 32
Suspicious folders found:1
Suspicious files found:16
==========================
Components ignored:0
Total components found:49

Examen complété
================
Modules suspects trouvés:0
Clés suspectes trouvées:19
Dossiers suspects trouvés:0
Fichiers suspects trouvés:20
=============================
Mouchards ignorés:0
Total des mouchards trouvés:39

[Cool, it's even internationally aware!]

I promptly downloaded adaware, handed him the floppy and suggested he run that first, next class he handed it back and said it worked, in fact it worked so well, he put it on his system and his mothers too. The friend is convinced I am some genius.... little does he know, I am back to fighting with sequential and RA files....