What is enough?

[marcusa]

On my lap top I have spywareblaster, spywareguard, spybot search and destroy, adaware, and the kazaa ip blocker, zone alarm and AVG as the antivirus

the question is is this too much?

[subratam]

Hi marcusa,

it would be better if you could say ur machine configuration

anyways.. umm... nah its not too much... each is needed and complement each other and dunno... i wud say maybe u cud keep an anti trojan but again depending on ur configuration...
and again.. its ok and not too much

thx

[marcusa]

I am sorry about the cross post

My machine is a lame Toshiba lap top, running xp professional, with the sun java engine not the MS one, Zonealarm, IPblocker (cam with kazaalite and AVG. The machine is regularly cleaned by one or more of Easycleaner, Cleanup and Clean Disk Security all of which seem to find different things

It has had one example of loverspy as well as the normal dross i used to get from web sites.

[subratam]

hmmm.... just to get on safe side 1st...

can you please follow these instructions (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=15913) just coz u r saying u find diff things everyday...

lets see if u got everythin ok in ur machine

thx

[marcusa]

thankyou

I worked through a trojan and then adaware 6 adaware could find nothing.

I went to the link (tomcoyote.org/....ones ) in your last post and got the following message

This account has been suspended.
Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources.

so will wait and look tomorrow

[subratam]

oops sorry marcusa,
tomcoyote is still running down.. ya its ok .. patience will always giv results good....

and again... u r not havin too much but almost perfect combination...

do post the hijack log as u get hijackthis.

cya soon

[JayK]

-{ Quote: " quoting: marcusa link=board=18;threadid=22054;start=0#msg132077 date=1076970072]
thankyou

I worked through a trojan and then adaware 6 adaware could find nothing.

I went to the link (tomcoyote.org/....ones ) in your last post and got the following message

This account has been suspended.
Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources.

so will wait and look tomorrow

" }-

There was a denial of service attack the last time I checked on that and related sites.

Sub probably wants you to a HJT - HijackthiS! scan, you can download such a file from say http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/10/17/10-17-69.shtml

It's a diagnosis tool, where you post your logs on forums for experts to inspect. Do not remove any entries there unless you know what you are doing!

When you say you "worked through" a trojan , does that mean you downloaded one on purpose?

In general, ad-aware and Spybot are not designed as trojan scanners. This includes backdoors, rootkits etc They handle mostly common search engine/homepage/hosts hijacker, many of which are either driveby activex downloads or bundled with software like kazza. Spywareguard and spywareblaster are similar.

Commerical offerings include
Pest Patrol (too many False positives), Webroot's Websweeper , Aluria's Spyware Eliminator and many more.

They mostly claim to be more capable of detecting keyloggers than ad-aware and/or spybot. And even then there are specialised anti-keyloggers scanners like Netcop.


AVG is adequate for most normal users, but at the very least use a backup virus scanner. On the freeware front, I recommend AVAST as either your main or backup antivrus. Others may prefer Antivir.

Another alternative is the free 1 year Etrust offer. http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/, there's also the ultra-rare Etrust server windows 2003 version that some people are using, but I don't think that available now.

There are other freeware antiviruses, but most of them are available only on demand , eg F-prot Dos, bitdefender etc.

There are the ulra cautious people here who will tell you freeware offerings are not trustworthy, and they prefer payware like NOD, KAV, Dr Web etc. I can't say they are wrong it all depends on your comfort level.

All the antiviruses above, will protect you adequately from most common viruses and trojans, but the people here will tell you if you have money to invest to invest on a Specialised antitrojan. The except is KAV/AVP which is known to be as good as most anti-trojans in detecting trojans. The normal ones used are TDS-3 , trojanhunter, Bo-clean.

Not many on the freeware front except

http://www.anti-trojan.net/en/software/free/ , and outdated software like Anti-trojan and http://swatit.org/ (not recommended).

What else, you might want a hardware firewall too.

Even after that, There are many many more things you could add, such as a sandbox like SSM, TDS's processguard, encryption, privacy enhancing tools that delete your MRU (most recently used lists), process viewers, startup monitors/guards, popupblockers, web proxies, banner replacements, cookie managers, etc etc

Personally, I would HIGHLY recommend, you switch from using Internet explorer as your primary browser to say Firefox or Opera, while that won't solve all your problems, it helps a lot.

[Detox]

VERY good post JayK!

[JayK]

-{ Quote: " quoting: Detox link=board=18;threadid=22054;start=0#msg132334 date=1077028903]
VERY good post JayK!
" }-

Thanks but I'm often very long winded. But then again, if I wanted to reach 600+ posts in about 3 or so months like some members, I should keep my answers short ::)

[Detox]

Hi Marcusa; I've moved your HijackThis log over to here (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=22280;start=0) where our experts will find and examine it ;)

Detox

[marcusa]

JayK, Detox and subratam

Thank you, very much, I have done all you recomended and feel better because of it, having a youngish daughter to play on barbie sites and stuff it gets a lot of rubbish on here

Thank you again

[Detox]

Everyone here is more than glad to help ;-)

I know the feeling except I use a LAN and my daughter plays on the Barbie/My Little Pony site with a secondary computer. I do keep it clean from the spy cookies with Javacool's SpywareBlaster.

[sig]

As JayK mentioned an antiTrojan app would be another app you may wish to look into. Generally AT's are recommended for those who use filesharing programs like Kazaa. Presently there are no freeware AT's I would recommend.

For ease of use and low resource use, I recommend BOClean. A onetime purchase gives you the real time monitor which a home user can install on all his/her home PC's and all program (for version 4) and signature definition updates. The program even automatically updates itself. No learning curve. A good deal IMO.

I must say, however, unlike some other apps, there is no free trial. You purchase it and then have 30 days within which you may ask for a refund if you don't want to keep the app. This 30 day money back guarantee is honored, with no questions asked. And product support is excellent.

The Wilders site provides some info about it (and other AT's) and links to the BOClean site if you're interested in checking it out.
http://www.wilders.org/anti_trojans.htm