December 28, 2004

You may be a spammer and not even know it.
posted by pyrrthon1 19 years ago
  • "Spammers are motivated by one thing - fast and easy money..." I'll never believe it in a million fucking years.
  • ...and with that lead in, the article has a great set-up for giving you some simple steps to take so that you can make sure you aren't a spam zombie. then they drop the ball, and offer jack. if i was an editor i wouldn't have let this go live without some sort of link at least to spyware removal tools. so, to remedy the situation, here's frogs recommendations to make sure you aren't a spam-bot: 1) kill spyware. run ad-aware, hijackthis, spybot search and destroy, etc. to kill anything on your system. then reboot and scan again. each one finds bits the others miss, and some things aren't removed all the way until after reboot. 2) keep spyware from coming back. don't run without a firewall (winXP has one built in, zonealarm is free, tiny firewall is good too), don't run without a virus scanner, don't run internet explorer or use outlook. 3) don't invite it in. spam filter your email, and trash (without opening) any suspect attachments. turning off the windows setting to hide file type extensions will help with this, so you can tell "virus.zip" from "virus.zip.exe" for example. also shut off the option to auto-add addresses to your address book when replying to an email - minor invconvenience, but also stops you from becoming a directory of good addresses for spammers if you do get hit. trust me, your co-workers will appreciate it. works for me. in the three-plus years i've had broadband at home, and the 6-plus years i've been on an unsecured LAN at work, i've not gotten hit with anything that i didn't invite into my system. (if you really want to not invite it in, i'd also add: 4) stay away from websites like astalavista, don't download software from file-sharing networks, and don't run programs that generate registration codes for you, 'cause these days some of them have spyware trojans inside.)
  • ...and with that lead in... That was my thought exactly. And my advice would be to do your real work on a computer kept as far from the internet as possible (where possible).
  • There was a Curious George thread a few months ago that covered spyware and adware in great detail. Unfortunately, it seems to have been lost in the big thread crash of a few months back (I think - I can't seem to find it.) If anyone can either find the thread or can direct me back to some of those anti-spyware sites I'd greatly appreciate it. (I've been debating making another Curious George post about it, but this is far more appropriate than another FPP.)
  • OR...the simple solution... buy a mac.
  • never, EVER, had a virus...
  • The only reason you've never had a virus on a mac is that nobody uses them.
  • I hate to be the one to bring it up but, Firefox and Opera are so much better than IE, I can't imagine why anyone would chose to continue to use IE unless forced to.
  • BTW, I get a "503 Bad Gateway The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. Apache Server at www.techtree.com Port 80" when I try that link. But then again, I'm *using* a Mac...
  • I've got the same thing on a Win PC.
  • nobody uses them. *Another nobody chimes in*