Signs of Spyware Activity and Unauthorized Control
Sign 1. Suddenly you discover a small device attached between the keyboard cable and its nest on the back PC panel.
Question. Did anybody offer you to set up a ?better? or ?faster? keyboard or special keyboard software?
Diagnosis. A Spyware that records all information entered from your keyboard (Keylogger) is installed on your PC.
Sign 2. Suddenly you discover a small device plugged into USB-port of your system block back panel.
Question. Did anybody repair your PC or offer you to ?try? new removeable data storage?
Diagnosis. A device which can record enough confidential information to compromise you or your company is installed on your PC.
Sign 3. You find expensive phone calls which you have never made in your phone bill.
Question. Does anybody use your phone or modem when you are absent?
Diagnosis. If you exclude the ability of secret phone calls, it means that a Dialer was installed on your PC without your notification. Most probably it had happened during your carefree surfing the Internet. When your modem is on, the Dialer connects with its service-provider offering sex-porno-services (video, audio, etc.) that require payment.
I was thinking the same thing but declined to make any statement about it after the IE7 thread because I'm using Arovax Shield which they kindly provide as freeware.
Some of this stuff is kind of rediculous. Anyway andavari what do you think of arovax shield? I tried it but didnt keep it because I had MSAS but since defender has come out I have seriously been considering alternatives. Defender's interface and lack of options really bugs me. It dosent even have a visible update button, its hidden in the help menu under the about menu.
I'm using the last version of Arovax Shield 1.2.314 because I found a bug in the newest version 1.2.346 that has to deal with it displaying an error dialog each time it is started that Firefox isn't installed which it isn't on my system because I use Opera. Of course if someone has Firefox installed it probably isn't an issue.
I started using Arovax Shield solely because MSAS was slow to prompt of changes to key areas such as IE's restricted sites which I never understood why it would warn about a new restricted site being entered as only trusted sites could potentially cause harm, and it's slow warning of HOSTS file changes. All of these changes that MSAS would take ages to warn about would cause it to spike my system to 50% resource usage. I don't need to go on about Windows Defender since I think it currently sucks in its current stage being that it refuses to update on my system and doesn't give much useful info, I'm just not going to use it at all no matter what's fixed in it. Also it has lost allot of features that MSAS had, leave it to MS to f'up an app that they could have just tuned.
I didn't want to use SpywareGuard because it's definition file is hopelessly outdated, and it doesn't protect other key areas of the system which is the reason why I went with Arovax Shield which doesn't cause me any problems, well at least 1.2.314 doesn't.
Edit:
Leave it to me to blab on an on, you wanted to know what I thought of it. In short I think it's alright.
Some of this stuff is kind of rediculous.
Indeed. That Arovax person better had be careful posting on the Hydrogenaudio.org forums hence he'll find himself banned quick.
Thank you very much. I know we both kind of have the same ideas when it comes to security. We both want it to just work and not make us do anything.
I have defender set to do scans but I'm not sure if its actually doing them. With MSAS I would have it do a scan at around 2AM, and when I would wake up their would be a results box displayed.(always clean of course) Anyway defender isn't doing this and I havent had time to see if its actually doing anything.
WD is was a very depressing continuation of the feature rich MSAS. Also I like my security apps that provide real-time protection to have a systray icon that displays at all times, versus what WD has which only shows during updates.
The only things I don't like about Arovax software is:
* They put too many shortcuts on the system in: Quick Launch, Start Menu, Desktop, Start Menu Group - when I think just a desktop shortcut and the Start Menu group would suffice.
* Uninstalling to do a clean upgrade/update automatically tries to load their website, which is something I really hate when uninstallers do that.
I know we both kind of have the same ideas when it comes to security. We both want it to just work and not make us do anything.
More-or-less. However I've never found a security related app that I didn't have to configure to my likings, however I still prefer to manually do scanning for malware because I'll know a scan took place and there's only certain times I'll let them scan which is after midnight.
You sure? I know you don't have it (you have the free edition?), but I just wanna be sure.
I can't speak for rridgely, but I personally also use ZA Pro, and don't have spyware problems. ZA Pro offers you antispyware scanning options, and it seems to do a good job.
Yes I do use the free version but I have used the pro version.(Tested again on the latest release) and it seemed to be just fine. My rule is that I dont want more than 2 security programs running real time. I make sure spyware blaster and spybot's immunize is updated and use an alternative browser.(I have also started putting IEspyad on pcs that I know will use IE)
Make your computer take care of itself. That is my new philosophy.
UP you may be alright. However I will always from now and into the future have some sort of real-time protection anti-spyware/anti-trojan that blocks crap in IE most notably the trusted sites zone because when I was a user of MSAS it blocked an entry as soon as I logged onto the Internet with my dial-up, I hadn't even got around to opening any browsers or update programs and bam it blocked a trusted site hijack and at that time I was using; eTrust EZAV, ZoneAlarm Free, MSAS.
ZoneAlarm Pro has been terribly buggy since v2.0. A firewall isn't going to keep spyware out, but it can stop it from doing what it wants. Common sense will keep spyware out. If you download and get spyware it can often alert you to the location and such. The latest Outpost Pro firewall is killer, it checks (literally scans) the file accessing the Internet to tell you if spyware is detected. ZoneAlarm Pro is slow and bloated, if you're on a low speed (such as dial-up) connection; pages will load slowly. I changed from ZoneAlarm Pro to Outpost Pro when I was on dial-up and after the quick, easy change; websites loaded extremely fast. There was no code injections like ZAP did, it blocked ads with a transparent image and allowed you to add to the list. It's one of those changes where there is no going back!
I checked Arovax Antispyware yesterday and it seems very weak, It kept finding the same entries each time it scanned and then showed it required a reboot to finish the clean up, After rebooting it finds the same entries and then repeats the reboot process.
To be fair one of them was SurfSideKick and that has a protecting file loading from the Appinit DLL's value to make it untouchable, Any file loading from that location is loaded into pretty much every running process because of User32.dll so the only way to fix them is Bart PE methods or Recovery Console (Or Swandogs New Avenger Program).
Arovax doesnt detect the protecting file so it has no chance of removing SSK. It kept finding a Reg value from SoftwareOnline's 'Rogue' Registry Cleaner but Im not sure why it couldnt remove it as I am able to remove it manually. It also detects Best Offers Network (Direct Revenue) but doesnt detect the files (tbon.exe & TBONWrd.exe), It just removes some of its registry values but if you refresh the registry after it removes them they are already back in place.
After cleaning with Arovax I used Ewido which found another 120 infected items including Backdoor Trojans, Trojan Droppers and Password stealers so Arovax needs some work on its definitions to make it more use in cleaning up pc's
I appreciate its beta and I think we all agree that any free spyware remover that is genuine is a good thing, its just not that effective in the quick test I did.
Some of the junk installed on my machine produces some strange results. I think its SoftwareOnline's Reg cleaner thats causing them but need to check into that, here's some screenshots.
ZA Pro is far better then Outpost (though it was free), I notice no difference in speed or anything....
I can't say which is better, as I have never used Outpost. All I know is that I am content with ZA Pro, and I have heard that Outpost was never tested on WinXP, which doesn't sound good to me.
One of these days I will give Outpost a shot, to see how well it really does work. Until then, I <3 ZA.
I checked Arovax Antispyware yesterday and it seems very weak
I have to agree with you about that!
I only used it for a few days and removed it. Arovax Shield however seems promising, although some stupid things like when manually downloading some Windows Updates it pops up a security alert about the changing of the default download directory which is silly and on the verge of annoying. Some default behaviours of IE aren't necessarily a potential risk or malware related such as where files are to be downloaded. However since I don't use IE but maybe 1-3 times a month I can put up with it.
