ok im getting rather annoyed at the ammount of spyware and stuff im finding on my puter im running adaware 3x a week and its finding between 30-40 items each scan. my internet explorer has been hijacked numerous times so instead of a msn search when you search in IE (not that i use it but its usefull when i misstype URLs) it now comes up with flashlight search. ive also had 3 viruses in the last week pc cillin picked up on them when i scanned. im sitting behind a belkin router with firewall enabled so i shoudent get random virii unless they come through attachments. MSN filters all attachments and blueyonder filters them aswell. so there is no way they came in email as im cautious mum is extra carfull. sister is raterh wreckless but as msn and blueyonder scans im not to worried. windows is all updated (win xp) if i scan my ip addy from one of those security webbys it will show all ports blocked. and when i down firewall it shows them open. how can i stop myself from all this crap. i never had this trouble 4 years ago i ran systems without virus scanners.
first, install firefox on all puters. second, delete every shortcut to IE on all boxes. third, register firefox as default browser on all boxes. might also want to check the router for firmware updates. i have the funky 4 port flash gordon looking one, and that thing had new firmware every month or so for a while. you also might want to set adaware to run in the background all the time... but that means buying a license for it. you also need to run spybot and hijack this to catch the stuff that adaware missed.
dumb question but can spyware travle through a network like viruses do. so if sister gets one on her puter can it transfer to mine.
No, spyware is nearly always installed by accident really, when you install one program, one of the boxes says "install such-and-such" a program, but you dont really bother reading and just click "Next", and the spyware is installed. If it was able to travel across networks with no user intervention, then it would be classified as a virus, not spyware.
