December 15, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – LifeSiteNews.com staff assume many of our readers are experiencing the same daily struggles as we are in trying to cope with a flood of damaging and annoying adware and spyware being inserted onto their computers without their permission. Most of this gets onto your computer simply as a result of browsing from one website to another.
If your computer is behaving strangely and browsing the Internet has become a very unpleasant chore of fighting pop-ups and figuring out why all kinds of strange icons or services are attaching themselves to your browser window, this article is for you. Actually, hardly anyone is not experiencing these problems today.
We have no financial relationship whatever with the services and products listed below. We are just sharing, as a service to you, what has been working for us.
SOLUTIONS
1.If at all possible, avoid using Microsoft Internet Explorer for your web browsing. It’s a good product. Problem is, because it has 90% of the world market, hackers have made it their almost exclusive target. Use Explorer and you will continue to get lots and lots of adware and spyware – guaranteed.
2. We recommend you try the free and recently released Mozilla Firefox available from http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ Users are reporting that this zippy browser seems to be blocking most, if not all, adware and spyware. It’s very easy to install. It has a built in pop-up stopper. Millions are downloading it.
3. We use three different programs to clean our systems of adware and spyware. All three, are needed since each one has a different strength for removing certain offending items. Its amazing that after running one program which removes tons of junk, the next one finds even more, and the third finds more again. No matter what sequence we run them in the same thing happens every time. However, now that we have begun using Firefox, it remains to be seen if all three programs are still needed.
The Programsa. Spysweeper. This seems to be the best one on the market right now. For us, it has been removing the most garbage files. Spysweeper is not free. It costs $30 U.S. from the Webroot website, but is well worth it. A very thorough program. Get it at http://www.webroot.com . b. Ad-Ware SE from Lavasoft. Vastly improved from previous versions of the product. There is a free version and a $27 U.S. Plus version which adds a memory resident ad watch program that blocks adware from re-installing itself onto your computer. The free version requires you to manually download updates and manually start the scan of your computer every now and then. But it is good!
Get it at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/c. Spybot. This one’s free and also very good, Set it to automatically download updates every time you run it and it zips along and gets rid of lots of junk. Get it at http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html A well respected program that has been around for awhile. Free, without any catches.
4. Adware and spyware are accumulated especially by browsing various mainstream and niche entertainment sites: movies, music, sites aimed at kids, and especially porn or other sleazy sites. Instant email services are also reputed to be an easy to exploit resource for spreading problems to millions of computers. As much as possible, avoid them. Make your computer a work and information tool, not an entertainment and mind numbing device.
Hope that helps.
Steve Jalsevac for LifeSiteNews.com