Spyware Deluge

[JackSpratts]

has anyone ever gotten more entries than this after using ad-aware or is this some kind of awful record?

i just got back from dinner w/a friend this evening and thought i'd check her pc for new spyware, since the last time i cleaned it was about 4 weeks ago. in that time her daughter d/l'd some barbie stuff, her son put in a copy of limewire and i saw the happy banzibuddies so i knew there'd be some junk in the registry. i downloaded today's latest ad-aware signature file (ref # 103-07-04-2002) from lavasoftusa and ran it. whoa - i found 238 EFFING REGISTRY ENTRIES! i've never seen or even heard of this many before. i'm sorry but this is way too much crap in just a few weeks of very light surfing. i forget how pervasive this has become because i clean mine regularly and actually avoid almost all of it to begin with – but most people do not. its getting out of hand now. these companies are beginning to kill the internet experience for very short term gains. it's so bad that if they're not careful people will begin calling for legislation - and that's a road fraught with danger i don't want to even think about going down.

if any of you guys responsible for this mess stop here from time to time to check out “the enemy” (and you do), please keep this in mind; one, we're not the enemy - we're working to improve the net experience for everyone (and that helps you) and two, your shortsighted actions are going to destroy the very businesses you're trying to grow.

- js.

[theknife]

gee Jack, can't they just do it long enough to attract the VC financing, float the IPO, cash out and bail?

[Mowzer]

I like that jack.

Instead of just keeping your own PC spy ware / bloat ware free, you make an effort to keep others clean too.

Allot of people dont often stop and think how even though your tech savvy theres a thousand freinds you might have that arent.

Everyone should take time out to help and show there friends how to keep there PC's clean.

Everyone should do that as a good deed, that way bloat ware would have a tougher time suceeding.

Allot of the girls I know dont bother or even know what spyware is. Only takes a sec to inform.

[twinspan]

Whoa, hold up, Jack... you've actually SEEN the Bonzi Buddy in action? What the hell does it actually do, I'm curious. (Altho not so curious as to ever in a million years d/l the f#king thing.) I thought I already interacted with my computer (maybe they mean that in the mid-90's 'Virtual Reality' fad sense...)

Also, maybe one of the graf geniuses here at NU could come up with a combo of the net's 2 favourite adverts: Bonzi Buddy and Punch the Monkey. Then I could while away the hours playing Punch the Bonzi...

and to be completely irrelevant, I just noticed how this FastTrack/Altnet business is a complete homage to my favourite quality drama (soap opera, cash-in sequel) plot-twist: the previously unheard-of identical twin... who's evil Have Brilliant Digital been watching Sunset Beach re-runs? Enquiring minds want to know.

[multi]

Put cydoor back so i could try and stop grokster from crashing!
and then fixed it again and found all these rubbish entries mostly reg and the ad cache
so i used these instructions(from the now defunct grokhack site)
GROKHAK PROJECT DISCONTINUED...
ALTERNATIVE HACKS:
1) GOTO WWW.KAZAALITE.TK (EXCELLENT WORK)
2) YOU DONT TRUST KAZAALITE AND WANT TO DO IT YOURSELF ???
OK HERE WE GO...
GET KAZAA OR THE NEW GROKSTER, INSTALL IT WITHOUT SPYWARE, REGISTER ...
USE AD-AWARE (WWW.LAVASOFT.DE) AND REMOVE **ONLY** THE REGISTRY ENTRIES OF CYDOOR
(KEEP CD_CLINT.DLL AND CD_HTM.DLL OR ELSE GROKSTER / KAZAA WONT WORK)

THEN GET THE REPLACEMENT/PATCHED .DLL FOR CD_CLINT.DLL
(http://www.cexx.org/dummies.htm)
PUT THE PATCHED CD_CLINT.DLL TO YOUR \WINDOWS (OR\WINT)\SYSTEM32 FOLDER...
YOU'RE DONE... NO SPYWARE CALLING HOME...

IF YOU ARE AN ADVANCED USER THEN DO THE FOLLOWING ALSO IF DESIRED:
GO TO YOUR \WINDOWS (OR \WINNT) DIRECTORY AND FIND AdCache FOLDER
DELETE IT AND MAKE A NEW **FILE** NAMED AdCache (NO EXTENSION)...
MAKE IT READ-ONLY FROM PROPERTIES (RIGHT-CLICK)...
DONE!!! NO BANNERS

MORE SECURITY ?? MORE BANDWIDTH???
GO TO \WINDOWS(OR \WINNT)\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC AND OPEN WITH NOTEPAD THE FILE HOSTS (NO EXTENSION)
ADD TO THE BOTTOM OF THE FILE THE FOLLOWING LINES

127.0.0.1 www.brilliantdigital.com
127.0.0.1 desktop.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 shop.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 www.bonzi.com

SAVE FILE (REMEMBER WITHOUT ANY EXTENSION)
DONE AGAIN !!!

MORE???
GO TO YOUR HARD DISK AND SHIFT-DELETE BDE FOLDER...

SORTED???
CHEERSSSSSSSSSSS...
but in xp i found the AdCache folder in system32 so removed it and put the file in its place there!
ah well all this and its still crashing
it was fine up to yesterday worked without a hitch for at least a week! then bingo ......crashing and using all the cpu when it does
damn fuken thingrararara.......115 bloody entries grgrgrgrgr

[multi]

ok, i tossed grokster
yay for kazzalite so far so good!
resumed all my downloads ok
even 1
i had forgoten about

[zombywoof]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
has anyone ever gotten more entries than this after using ad-aware or is this some kind of awful record?

i just got back from dinner w/a friend this evening and thought i'd check her pc for new spyware, since the last time i cleaned it was about 4 weeks ago. in that time her daughter d/l'd some barbie stuff


- js.

It seems a lot of stuff from Barbie software is filled wirh spyware. I'm talking about the purchased titles bought in stores. Most of the spyware I clean out in my pc is related to Barbie software or Barbie websites.

[JackSpratts]

i've met barbie and while she may be a bit of a dimwit, she's very sweet and quite pretty (it's not her fault she's so small) and she likes to have lots of fun. i'm sure she has no idea that the creepy people she works for are so mean and really aren't her friends!

pushing spyware onto children is immoral and shouldn't be done. children are too young to begin to understand the consequences of having such stuff on the family pc.

- js.

[Smoketoomuch]

I ran adaware with the same reference file as Jack. And was just reading Walktalker's Newspaper shop (great newsbits ) where I found a link to a page explaining how to remove BDE. So, ad-aware found bde and removed it, but when I saw how many dll's and hidden directories are there, I decided to run a filesearch for bde*.* - (actually all those files - mainly dll - began with bde) and surprise: found one more BDE directory in Windows/system, and a bdeinstaller.exe somewhere that was apparently missed by Ad-Aware.

edit: - I haven't tried grokster/kazaa/gnumorpheus or whatever, so it must have been a remnant from morpheus 1.3.3? or maybe something else?

[ssj4_android]

Yeah, cydoor has like 115 different things . Mostly registry files.

[Snarkridden]

Thats 253 damn entires, programs, folders, most to do with DAP the download accelerator, and a few browser helpers, that after 10 mins browsing, thats the bummer, I have NEVER used DAP, never had it on the system, so it must have gotten in ages ago and been lying dormant all this time?

Very worrying indeed... Not only that, but I've not run Grokster or Morpheus for weeks..

Snark...

[JackSpratts]

make sure you're running the dummy cd_clint.dll. it's apx 48k while the bad one's 151k. otherwise you'll just find yourself with about 225 registry entries at your next log on. clean or not, it all comes right back instantly.

- js.

[twinspan]

I ran Ad-aware twice yesterday: first with the 25 Feb ref list (no new components found) then again with the new 7 April reflist: over 220 new components found!

But here's the kicker: 218 of those were the same two repeated over & over again (a Comet Cursor reg entry and something called sc3 autofile or something like that). I checked them down to the last digit and they were definitely the same two components repeated 109 times.

So really there were only 4 new components found, those two, a temp BDE file I had missed and one other I can't remember.

PS on another subject, I installed the new DivX 5.0 plain bundle (not Pro pay bundle, not Pro GAIN bundle) from divx.com yesterday, and ran ad-aware; no new components found. If you need to upgrade your video codec, you can go for the PLAIN bundle without having to worry about spyware. So you can avoid the other bundles if you only need to decode/view.

NO GAIN, NO PAIN.

[Smoketoomuch]

Originally posted by twinspan

PS on another subject, I installed the new DivX 5.0 plain bundle (not Pro pay bundle, not Pro GAIN bundle) from divx.com yesterday, and ran ad-aware; no new components found. If you need to upgrade your video codec, you can go for the PLAIN bundle without having to worry about spyware. So you can avoid the other bundles if you only need to decode/view.

NO GAIN, NO PAIN.

I use divx 5.0 for a while, and it seems that it does what they say - you no longer need 3.11alpha to play certain avis. And if you want to encode as well, throw me a PM

[twinspan]

Originally posted by Smoketoomuch
divx 5.0... And if you want to encode as well, throw me a PM

If only I had the hard drive space to start ripping and encoding..

Thanks for the offer tho. I'll remember if I ever get round to upgrading.

[goldie]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
has anyone ever gotten more entries than this after using ad-aware or is this some kind of awful record?

if any of you guys responsible for this mess stop here from time to time to check out “the enemy” (and you do), please keep this in mind; one, we're not the enemy - we're working to improve the net experience for everyone (and that helps you) and two, your shortsighted actions are going to destroy the very businesses you're trying to grow.

- js.

While chatting to Snark the other day, I said it was getting to the point where just "being" online was becoming a hazardous situation.

Just updated my Ad-aware yesterday and I feel a need to vent over the findings.

So sad.........

I realize these folks have to figure out how to earn a living, but just like IRL - (listen REEEEEEEEEEAL careful those responsible):

WE WON'T STAND FOR YOU INVADING OUR PRIVACY WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION AND WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE, WE WON'T BE USED AND ABUSED!!!

We will be empowered by knowledge and cold, ruthless determination and we WILL stick together against you.

WE will fight you tooth and nail all the way. We will spread the word and defend ourselves and others with a ferocity never imagined.

Your sheep have turned into wolves.