[stevesnj]

AVG antivirus

AD_AWARE

[gorickey]

On a side-note, that "Ad-aware 6" is really good...

[Michel_80]

Damn! Havind said that, adaware haven't found spyware on my pc laptop. Lucky me, I guess.

[tooki]

AdAware found a piece of spyware on my Virtual PC, which had a total uptime of maybe 15 hours. Un-freaking-believable.

tooki

[Kristoff]

it's that swedish website you went to tooki

[squish]

yes, i agree. why did it take 6 tries to get adaware right?

[yukon]

just to make sure tooki, adaware will detect spyware on a default install of Windows. there are registry keys it watches (media player), specifically one data mining entry called "Alexa", which I seem to remember having ties to amazon.com though I'm really not sure on that (not hard to look it up). It also misrepresents malicious cookies as spyware, when they are simply privacy concerns.

Beyond that, I like this application. Spybot S&D may beat it or have more stregnth with log scanning, but AdAware has always worked for me, it's often the first thing I add on a new install.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by stevesnj:
AVG antivirus snip

AD_AWARE

snip

And if you say that to them, they are likely to respond: "That doesn't happen if you know what you are doing", and sometimes "I've never had a virus".

It's your own fault, you are not a victim.

[Cadaver]

Here's one for ya...

I'm presently at an academic medicine meeting (discussing methods for research design, teaching, residency/medical student program organization, etc) where virtually all speakers are presenting off laptops and LCD projectors. There's too many different lectures going on concurrently to have all lectures running off one machine, so people are presenting off their own laptops.

The Mac/PC split is about 40% Mac, 60% PC - I'm in academia, so Macs tend to be better represented than probably in the general population. So anyway, of all these laptops are being connected and disconnected to LCD projectors... I've seen a total of ZERO Macs have display problems. This mornning alone, there were four presenters using Windows laptops who couldn't get the laptop to recognize that a second display (LCD/DLP projectors) had been connected. Every Mac worked just perfectly; the only problems came from PCs, delaying many of the lectures as long as 15 minutes.

Interesting to note that I've seen ONLY two brands at this meeting; Apple and Dell. I've seen NO non-Dell PC laptops whatsoever. Apples ranged from iBooks to 12" PBs and 15" PBs (Al and Ti). Various models of Dell laptops (who knows what kind).

And ALL the lecture delays were caused by the Windows machines. You'd suspect that 40% of the problems should come from PowerBook/iBook users if the distribution was random among users. Perhaps the Dell users are just less adept at using a computer, but since Macs do tend to be favored by the less computer-savvy people, I don't think that's it. I'm forced to conclude that Macintosh computers are superior for using during live presentations when compared with Dell Windows-based machines.

[hudson1]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
You'd suspect that 40% of the problems should come from PowerBook/iBook users if the distribution was random among users. Perhaps the Dell users are just less adept at using a computer, but since Macs do tend to be favored by the less computer-savvy people, I don't think that's it.

Actually, I think the more you know about computers, the more you want a Mac. Of course, we've become used to things "just working" so once we're smart enough to get a Mac, we can then forget much of what we've learned. How's that for making sense? :-)

[bartman00]

also try Bazooka, it'll find some sneeky stuff Ad-Aware seems to miss. It only detects it, you have to remove it.

Bart

[cambro]

Originally posted by hudson1:
Actually, I think the more you know about computers, the more you want a Mac.

Ding, ding...we have a winner!

I think this is why Mac users tend to be "vocal" about their systems. They tend to be the folks that just don't own a computer, but that really do make their machine a central part of a lot of what they do...at work and play.

Anyway, yeah, why anyone would want to run Windows on machines that connect to any network or device is beyond me. Here at school, it just cracks me up. Stuff spreads on windows machines like the plague...but the cure is so easy! (and no, it's not small numbers phenomena on this campus...there are LOTS of macs...public and private).

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Here's one for ya...

<snip>
And ALL the lecture delays were caused by the Windows machines. You'd suspect that 40% of the problems should come from PowerBook/iBook users if the distribution was random among users. Perhaps the Dell users are just less adept at using a computer, but since Macs do tend to be favored by the less computer-savvy people, I don't think that's it. I'm forced to conclude that Macintosh computers are superior for using during live presentations when compared with Dell Windows-based machines.

I support 15 sales reps in the field, with Dell Inspiron laptops and LCD projectors and this is ONE of the biggest problems they have had. I setup a web page specifically showing them how to do it right. Basically, power off the laptop, the projector, connect everything, power projector, turn on lappie, and hit FN F8 and it usually works then.
With the powerbook, just turn on the projector and plug it in and it just works.

[stuffedmonkey]

My company used to have Dell laptops, but switched to IBM - in no small part becaouse of the amount of troubles the Dells have with projectors.

[Drizzt]

Here's the worst I got :

[MacGorilla]

That boggles the mind.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by Drizzt:
Here's the worst I got :

My wife beat that easily in last weeks forray of web surfing. Over 1100 objects. She asked me why things were going so slow on the 2.8ghz P4. Then she downloaded an attachment in an email she thought came from me. Gotta love the Netsky trojan. Then she asked how she could get rid of all the pop-ups and why IE kept crashing. Educated about computers, she is, NOT. She loves the Mac, but can't get her cute little smilies and icons to insert into emails.

[Spliff]

Originally posted by stevesnj:
AVG antivirus

How come there are still viruses on the hard drive? Are there some viruses that can't be removed once your system is infected?

Recently, a friend of mine had to reinstall his Dell's OS because some viruses got past NAV. Even after formatting the drive, his system was still infected. I don't understand how that is possible. Are there other components of Windows machines that can be infected?

[yukon]

Viruses don't like to be removed. Often a purpose of an antivirus is to prevent infection by diagnosing files before they are executed (note I didn't say "binaries", stupid windows). For example, I believe one was 666/Sevendust on MacOS which Virex could not remove from an infected binary - disinfecting your computer was easy, remove the 666 extension and delete/replace the infected binaries.

Never heard of Bazooka. I'm very suspicious of these programs, do a google search for "ad aware spyware" or "spy bot search destroy spyware" and you'll see what I mean, there are impostors, almost always containing spyware. Not to say "Bazooka" is spyware, but I'd suggest sticking with the most trusted programs. I'd suggest OpenSourceSoftware/OSS, but there aren't any programs to remove spyware that I know of....OSS doesn't deal with spyware much it seems (*nix has little spyware, thanks Limewire)

I believe the worst I've seen on a friend's machine was 480 items (plus viruses and trojans), and a friend has found 900 items on a family member's computer.

[Hi I'm Ben]

You guys sure do look at a ton of porn on your PCs!

[pwolfe1]

AVG Antivirus is the biz!!!!

[sniffer]

Norton Internet Security (w/ NAV included), or what's the name again, is the virus. Easy to remove thought.

[Drakino]

Originally posted by tooki:
AdAware found a piece of spyware on my Virtual PC, which had a total uptime of maybe 15 hours. Un-freaking-believable.

Did you do any web browsing in IE? AdAware (and other spyware removers) like to also count cookies from ad banner companies to help inflate the numbers and make you feel you really need the product. While ad banner cookies are annoyning, they are pretty harmless. I bet that if Adaware made a version for Mac, it would find something on everyones machine.

At least Safari makes it much easier to change cookie settings though compaired to IE on Windows.

Adware programs are definitly an issue in a Windows/IE enviornment when users click Yes to unknown install boxes. This is one reason my grandparents, and parents friends use Firefox on their PCs. Though, I'm doing my best to migrate the grandparents to using their iBook more and more.

[tooki]

Originally posted by yukon:
just to make sure tooki, adaware will detect spyware on a default install of Windows. there are registry keys it watches (media player), specifically one data mining entry called "Alexa", which I seem to remember having ties to amazon.com though I'm really not sure on that (not hard to look it up).

Yeah, I think it was Alexa.

tooki

[ink]

No doubt; a co-worker wanted to un-install AVG because it kept "annoying" him every 15 minutes with a virus warning. It turns out that he had a lovely ActiveX object installed in Internet Explorer that would re-download the trojan every time a new window was opened up. It took 3 reboots, Adaware, HijackThis and Spybot to finally get his machine clean; there were well over 100 different spy/malware programs on his machine.

Windows is such a mess.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by ink:
No doubt; a co-worker wanted to un-install AVG because it kept "annoying" him every 15 minutes with a virus warning. It turns out that he had a lovely ActiveX object installed in Internet Explorer that would re-download the trojan every time a new window was opened up. It took 3 reboots, Adaware, HijackThis and Spybot to finally get his machine clean; there were well over 100 different spy/malware programs on his machine.

Windows is such a mess.

That's why I use Mozilla on the XP PC. It doesn't support ActiveX, and its Mail app have a spam filter. What a world of difference. Still, MSN always use Explorer no matter what. Perhaps someone have a suggestion on a solution? (Thought this is da OS X forum, but what the heck? )

[stuffedmonkey]

yeah, mozilla firefox is the best. I use it at work on XP, and home on my virus and spyware free by definition mac

My recent favorite was the Black Ice virus - there is some hole in older versions of the BlackIce PC software firewall program that can be exploited - the virus overwrited random sectors until your machine dies.
We had about 20 people get that at my work. I laughed my a** off that a piece of "protective" software was the key to people getting in and deleting everyone's files.

[Defiant Jazz]

Being a PC user, I must say that Ad-Aware isn't the only app you need. Ideally, a combination of Ad-Aware, Spybot, SpywareBlaster in tandem innoculates your PC from 99% of junk, adding a prog called The Proxomitron for web filtering/ad and popup blocking and a couple of the freeware antivirus apps will keep your Windows box happy and safe.

LOL...and I wonder why I'm thinking of switching...

[CharlesS]

How much access does IE give you if you are an ActiveX object on a web page? What sorts of things can you do to someone's system?

At school, they've started re-imaging all the Windows PC's in the computer lab every night, because before, the machines all had their desktops and screensavers set to something annoying, the IE home page was always some online casino site that would pop up a thousand windows, etc. They said that with IE, people would go to sites and the sites would automatically change these settings. Is it really true that you can automatically change someone's home page through stuff on a web page, through IE? Because that sounds really scary...

[sniffer]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
How much access does IE give you if you are an ActiveX object on a web page? What sorts of things can you do to someone's system?

To bring up an example, a positive one, my ISP have a web solution where you can by click on a button to install a plug-in in Internet Explorer, confirm, and you can just choose and click between REAL pc games online. Just click play, and the game boots up just fine after buffering in lets say 15-20 minutes over my 705kb connection. Its really amazing technology. But the drawback is ofcourse security. The only thing needed for this plugin to run successfully on my computer was me accepting the plug-in. Now, what if the plug-in was a destructive one? You can't tell the difference! I was just assuming I could trust my ISP, which I also do. This is ofcourse nothing compared to what is to come in the windows world in the future. ActiveX is a toolset to narrow the barrier between your machine and the internet. Platform depended ofcourse.

[stuffedmonkey]

"Is it really true that you can automatically change someone's home page through stuff on a web page, through IE? Because that sounds really scary..."


It IS scary, and it is definately true - although I think this problem goes away if you run all eleventy-billion Microsoft patches available from windowsupdate.com. Yeah, not only can it change your settings, it can install spyware and viruses on some of the older holes. Remember Blaster? you could get a virus JUST FROM BEING CONNECTED TO A NETWORK CONNECTION. (sorry for the all caps, just had to make a point

[C.J. Moof]

Originally posted by Defiant Jazz:
Being a PC user, I must say that Ad-Aware isn't the only app you need. Ideally, a combination of Ad-Aware, Spybot, SpywareBlaster in tandem innoculates your PC from 99% of junk, adding a prog called The Proxomitron for web filtering/ad and popup blocking and a couple of the freeware antivirus apps will keep your Windows box happy and safe.

Oh, is that all it takes?

<goes off to write thank-you note to Apple for OS X and Safari>

And yeah, the use of ActiveX for the powers of evil is downright scary.... asking Aunt Betty to judge if it's OK or not to install this plugin from domain.server.com is NOT security.

[stevesnj]

Originally posted by Spliff:
How come there are still viruses on the hard drive? Are there some viruses that can't be removed once your system is infected?

Recently, a friend of mine had to reinstall his Dell's OS because some viruses got past NAV. Even after formatting the drive, his system was still infected. I don't understand how that is possible. Are there other components of Windows machines that can be infected?

Some have to be removed with a removal tool, Norton (Symantec) provides good easy tools. SOme of the viruses can actually disable anti-virus programs and some boot viruses canot be removed within Windows. I had to manually remove the rest but the persons computer this is decided to have me re-instasll Windows. Also formating a drive doesnt erase viruses it just is a tool to prepare a hardrive or partition for install of an OS so the files are just scrambled up not removed. I zeroed the drive which writes 1's and 0's on the drive which 99.999% of viruses cannot survive. I always zero my Windows drives when It call to re-install Windows.

[stevesnj]

Originally posted by stevesnj:
Some have to be removed with a removal tool, Norton (Symantec) provides good easy tools. SOme of the viruses can actually disable anti-virus programs and some boot viruses canot be removed within Windows. I had to manually remove the rest but the persons computer this is decided to have me re-instasll Windows. Also formating a drive doesnt erase viruses it just is a tool to prepare a hardrive or partition for install of an OS so the files are just scrambled up not removed. I zeroed the drive which writes 1's and 0's on the drive which 99.999% of viruses cannot survive. I always zero my Windows drives when It call to re-install Windows.

Also Ad Aware has a choice for a deep scan in the 'customize' menu which deep scans the drive that not many people are aware of. There are options (red checkmarks) that you need to (green check) to deep scan, this always finds more stuff.

[lenox]

It seems like sometimes you have to reboot the PC into safe mode and/or log in as a different administrator user. One thing I've noticed that helps (at least in my office where not everyone is actually doing their work all day) is to set the regular user as a 'limited user'. This way, any funky activex controls they encounter can only run with the permissions of the limited user account that's logged in. Seems to help.

Damn PCs.

[Moose]

Originally posted by stevesnj:
Also formating a drive doesnt erase viruses it just is a tool to prepare a hardrive or partition for install of an OS so the files are just scrambled up not removed. I zeroed the drive which writes 1's and 0's on the drive which 99.999% of viruses cannot survive. I always zero my Windows drives when It call to re-install Windows.

Yes. Formatting a drive does not actually remove the bits of data on the disk that comprise the virus. What it does, however, is removes the directory entries that point to the virus. Unallocated sectors do not randomly become allocated again. If this happens to you, your computer has deeper problems that writing random bits will not solve.

If you boot from a trusted, known-good floppy (or CD), write a new partition table, new MBR, and new filesystem, then you're good. Given that boot sector viruses are pass� these days, just writing a new filesystem catches the overwhelming majority (unlike you, I'm not going to quantify my estimates) of current in-the-wild viruses.

Again, zeroing the drive is an unnecessary, time-consuming task that provides no protection against reinfection.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by lenox:
.. set the regular user as a 'limited user'. This way, any funky activex controls they encounter can only run with the permissions of the limited user account that's logged in. Seems to help.

Damn PCs.

Agree. It's freaking insane that XP puts any user as administrator after a fresh install. They call it administrator, but its privilegies are more equal to ROOT. What the hell are they thinking?

[someone_else]

Originally posted by sniffer:
Agree. It's freaking insane that XP puts any user as administrator after a fresh install. They call it administrator, but its privilegies are more equal to ROOT. What the hell are they thinking?

In NT, the Admin user is root. That's why there is so much damage too be done by running as Admin. In OS X, Admin != root. So a virus could not replace system files, but it could still delete all user files, which are usually the ones that can't be replaced. Restoring a system is a minor annoyance -- restoring user data that was not backed up can cause a lot more heartache, or be down right impossible. Moral: always back up -- at least once a week, or even better once a day.

Having said all of that, I feel a 1000% safer running OS X rather than Windows.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by sniffer:
And if you say that to them, they are likely to respond: "That doesn't happen if you know what you are doing", and sometimes "I've never had a virus".

It's your own fault, you are not a victim.

In this case, it almost definitely is the user's "fault".

The vast majority of viruses on Windows today are spread via e-mail. Ones where you have to specifically open attachments (okay, so that's more trojan-like), which means you did something dumb. There have been a few that are purely network-based (Blaster and Slammer, for instance), but a quick security update and that's fixed as well.

As for spyware, what the hell are you installing, anyway? Let's face it - the freeware scene on Windows is all but dead, and the "shareware" scene is much less scrupulous than on the Mac. Almost any P2P software you download on Windows will have this stuff. So don't install it. Similarly, check up on that WeatherBug before installing, etc....

I an sit here and easily say that in 4 years of using Win2K/XP at work and being smart, I have never had a virus/worm/spyware/adware/anything affect me. Period. Ditto for several of my more-informed colleagues.

[Michel_80]

Too much bad stuff on the web to be surfing with a Windows box. I feel as though I need to run adaware + temp cleaner every day (even though it has not found anything yet since I don't surf beyond work network).

Much safer with OSX.

[yukon]

To reply to the topic, less to the content, I have a short thing to mention.

After spending a lot of time researching on a specific Samba error, causing no end of trouble with Windows clients, and continually editing my samba configuration (learning a lot in the process i suppose), I have come to the conclusion that it is not Samba nor Windows' direct fault, but my Ethernet card, which cannot handle high traffic loads. It's verifyable outside Samba even, packets are just dropped. This took forever, lots of effort went into this, never ever have had any kind of experiance like this with Macintosh (which is where my experiance is mainly).

Yes, my SMC 1244TX, based on the Realtek RTL8139(A) chipset, is crap. If anyone uses any SMC ethernet cards or anything based on that chipset, I'd suggest testing it under a high load, any trouble you've been having in networking, probably will be traced to it.

[ink]

Originally posted by someone_else:
In NT, the Admin user is root.

Not quite true; the NT (eg Windows 2000, XP and 2003) "root" user is called System. Administrator is a normal user that only has the power to tell the OS to launch tasks as the System user. A minor difference, but to be pedantic... :-)

As a side note, that's why you get "Access Denied" when you try to end tasks or modify files that are running as the System user, and also why it needs to reboot in order to prevent System-level processes from starting (Administrator can't stop them once they've started unless the process allows it).

[ebsidohw]

I've actually had more virii on my mac than my PC. 1 on the mac, 0 on the PC. The only upkeep I do on either is auto updates of the OS and Norton on both.

[Cipher13]

Upon seeing this thread, I decided to put an antivirus system on my PC (XP). It's never had one, and is on the net 24/7. Just thought it couldn't hurt.

It had a single virus (a harmless one, at that), which had infected 5 files only (all within the one folder) - these 5 files were infected when I got them. They were Poser or Bryce or 3ds max files or something... can't remember. Just models.

So...

XP PC, online 24/7 - 1 virus, 5 infections, no anti-virus software.
Number of viruses transmitted via the net: 0. All were copied from a friends machine when I grabbed some of his models.

Lesson: stupidity spreads viruses, not Windows alone. As you're all aware, no doubt.

To be honest, I was quite surprised that the machine only had one virus after all this time too.

Could be the firewall doing a damn good job, also.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Lesson: stupidity spreads viruses, not Windows alone. As you're all aware, no doubt.

To be honest, I was quite surprised that the machine only had one virus after all this time too.

Could be the firewall doing a damn good job, also.

A smart user, an up-to-date patched system, a firewall and possibly NAT from your router can all lead to a non-infected system. Take one stupid user trick and none of the other factors matter at all.

[C.J. Moof]

For me, this all comes down to who's in control of the human-machine relationship. My OS X machines require minimal babysitting- if I was to exchange Bryce files with another user, the idea of scanning them for virii wouldn't even cross my mind. Neither does the condition of my Anti-Virus software, the last update on my firewall, or if I've been infected by spyware because of one regrettable click. I'm in charge, and my machine does what I tell it to darn near all the time.

A Windows machine on the net is like looking after a toddler. You've got to constantly assure that they're not about to do something dangerous, and even while you're supervising them, they manage to soil themselves anyway. I don't care for machines that demand I analyze the threat level of everything I click or open. I'm a system admin, I know at least enough to keep my job and do freelance work, but I still managed to get all my bookmarks hijacked on my Win2K machine.

Guess I'm not a smart enough user.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by C.J. Moof:
.
Guess I'm not a smart enough user.

Sure you are. Notice I used the word ' can ' lead to an uninfected system, as there are some things even the smartest user can't protect their windows install from malicious attacks.

[-Q-]

Originally posted by ebsidohw:


I've actually had more virii on my mac than my PC. 1 on the mac, 0 on the PC. The only upkeep I do on either is auto updates of the OS and Norton on both.

What virus did you get on the mac? I've never actually seen a real mac virus in my 15+ years of using 'em.

And since the pedantic barrier has been broken, virii isn't a word.

[Sarc]

closest I've been to viruses on my Mac are Office Macro viruses ... I guess we should thank M$ for those too.

[Groovy]

Originally posted by diamondsw:


I an sit here and easily say that in 4 years of using Win2K/XP at work and being smart, I have never had a virus/worm/spyware/adware/anything affect me. Period. Ditto for several of my more-informed colleagues.

may i ask how you and your more-informed colleagues know in the last
4 years you have not been infected? If you had to BUY and install all these
anti virus/worm/spyware/adware/anything apps to scan then you already lost.
You are wasting time and money.

heck in fact you actually PAID to get your PC infected with PRO anti
virus/worm/spyware/adware/anything so called tools that SLOW DOWN
your PC MORE than most of the FREE virus/worm/spyware/adware/anything
you could get infected with

Turn off live active scanning to get your speed back then e-mail and many other ways
are wide open to infection until your 3:00 AM to 5:00 AM scans from all those
PRO anti apps you were forced to buy. LOL

don't fool yourself. If you have stuff like norton anti virus and Adware 6 installed
(Name your anti app here) then you ARE infected.