Sorting the Block List

[jabaka]

Is there a way to sort the block list? Going through it looking for a particular entry would be much easier if it was possible to sort it.

[Tassie_Devils]

Not to my knowledge...

The Restricted Sites Listings are already in alphabetical order [numerals first as usual] then AB, etc.

The IE ActiveX blocks are listed by ActiveX first then Cookies...

If you want to find something quickly in that one, and you know it starts, say with a 'T' for example, simply put your cursor into the listings and click once to highlight the first entry and hit the letter 'T' on keyboard.

That will jump to the very first entry starting with 'T'... then.... simply hit 'T' again, and it jumps to the next entry with 'T'..

See screenshot.. I tried it and it jumps straight to the first T, hit again, and it will jump to next T entry.

HTH...


Cheers, TAS

[Bubba]

Also....you can right click the list of items and do a Find search. This makes it easier if your looking for a particular CLSID #.

[Marja]

Glad to know there are ways to "sort" out the block lists. I told some relatives to d/l SpyBlaster and SpyGuard, they were not happy with it at all, turns out I didn't tell them to go thru and make sure all the boxes were checked, (learned that d/l Spybot) sure enough after about 15 boxes, none of the rest were checked. The first time I d/l'ed them and Spybot, I didn't know you were supposed to go thru the whole list, and could have had some real bad stuff come thru. Do they d/l like that? Or does it depend on the site? Every time I d/l now I make sure the bad guys are checked and blocked manually.

Marja8)

[Tassie_Devils]

Hello Marja.....:)

No, you should NOT have to do that manually... I've *never* had to check items to make them active against baddies...

All you shuold have to do is, once installed, check for updates, if any it will install them, but, you then have to click 'Enable ALL protection' button which will do that for you.

To check if you like, after you do get an update, and installed, before you click on Enable All Protection, go to the lists and scroll thru them and you will see the new ones in bold [red or black, forget, used to be red] UNchecked.

Then enable the protection with the one click and check again if you like, but what you should see is the wording:

0 items have protection disabled.... as in ALL items are PROTECTED... that's what you should be looking for.

Cheers, TAS

[Tassie_Devils]

Here :):)

TAS

[Marja]

Tassie,

I always thought everything was supposed to be checked when you d/l'd the programs, but, the last time I (and 3 others) did that, most of the baddies were UN checked!! I learned that d/l'ng Spybot and finding some progs in the ignore lists were already checked to be ignored!! The SpyBlaster and SpyGuard progs were left with, in one cas, over a hundred boxes Un-checked? Mainly, CWS and lop boxes, can the download sites change the programs? It really makes you wonder if that is why so many people d/l these, then start having problems? As far as SpyBlaster and SpyGuard, once I manually went through and made sure everything was checked, they never give me any problem!! If it were just me, maybe, but, same site and three more people?

Thanks for your time, tho!
Marja8)

[Marja]

I had to go thru SpyGuard and Spybot, but, at least with SpywareBlaster(sorry) I noticed many disabled items, so I caught them quick, but, I still went thru each one, just in case:)!

Marja

[LowWaterMark]

Hi Marja,

I'm having a difficult time understanding what you mean exactly...

You said: I always thought everything was supposed to be checked when you d/l'd the programs, but, the last time I (and 3 others) did that, most of the baddies were UN checked!!

The SpywareBlaster installer program is what you download from an approved Javacool mirror site when you first install a new version of SpywareBlaster. (Of course, that needs to only be done when a major version upgrade is actually released. You don't reinstall that once it has first been installed on your system.)

The recent release of SpywareBlaster 3.2 happened on July 7th, and the install kit was a 2.14MB file. The installer itself doesn't have anything checked or unchecked in it. As Tas noted above, you must first use the "Enable All Protection" button after installing the program, which will itself check all items and set the protections for them.

So, are you saying that after you did "enable all protection", and the main SB page showed "0 items have protection disabled..." (like in the image above), that you then went to the Internet Explorer tab in SpywareBlaster and found items unchecked? If so, then this is the first time anyone reported that.

Now, there have been cases where other security software (Pest Patrol, AOL's privacy software, Alura, etc.) have been disabling some protections in error, but those are usually only a few items at a time, not almost the entire list of protections.

Also note that Spybot is entirely different. You've mentioned the few items in Spybot that "ship" as ignored (checked in their config to not be alerted on). The author of Spybot did that on purpose. All copies of Spybot 1.3 ship that way. But again that's totally different than SpywareBlaster, which can not ship with ignored items.

You also said: Every time I d/l now I make sure the bad guys are checked and blocked manually.

Perhaps you ought to explain in some detail exactly the steps you are taking so that we can follow along and try to figure out what is happening there. As noted above, no one has ever had to scroll through all the SpywareBlaster protection lists manually checking each item one at a time.

[MikeBCda]

{QUOTE-> So, are you saying that after you did "enable all protection", and the main SB page showed "0 items have protection disabled..." (like in the image above), that you then went to the Internet Explorer tab in SpywareBlaster and found items unchecked? If so, then this is the first time anyone reported that.
<-QUOTE}

I'd mentioned a couple of times that I get essentially the same thing, but no one apparently ever picked up on that.

I'll often find that the "protection" page is showing 0 items unprotected, but if I hit the IE tab there's a dozen or so items (always cookies, not ActiveX) towards the end unticked and red. If I then untick and then re-tick the cookies-protection box, they're fine again, usually for the rest of that IE session no matter where I go.

I guess my biggest concern is the discrepancy between the "0 items unprotected" when the IE detailed list is saying otherwise. ???

[LowWaterMark]

Ah, thanks Mike, I never picked up on that myself from your previous posts. We'll need Javacool's input of course to explain the discrepancy aspect. Still, that is different than Marja's situation where almost all protections are unchecked on multiple PCs.

[javacool]

{QUOTE-> I'd mentioned a couple of times that I get essentially the same thing, but no one apparently ever picked up on that.

I'll often find that the "protection" page is showing 0 items unprotected, but if I hit the IE tab there's a dozen or so items (always cookies, not ActiveX) towards the end unticked and red. If I then untick and then re-tick the cookies-protection box, they're fine again, usually for the rest of that IE session no matter where I go.

I guess my biggest concern is the discrepancy between the "0 items unprotected" when the IE detailed list is saying otherwise. ??? <-QUOTE}

Hmm - I'll have to look into that - there should be no way for that to happen. ???

Just so I can narrow down potential causes, is this only happening on one system or multiple different ones? And on what Windows version(s) and IE version(s)?

Thanks,

-Javacool

[Bubba]

{QUOTE-> 0 items unprotected <-QUOTE}Mike are you sure you have seen the word....unprotected ?

I have only ever seen the words....protection disabled....or enable protection....but never the word....unprotected....Hmmm, strange indeed.

[MikeBCda]

Sorry, Bubba, I was quoting from obviously faulty personal memory -- the "front" page does read "0 items have protection disabled".

JC, it wasn't clear whether your question about different systems was directed at me or to the membership generally. I only use this one computer, and my sig. pretty well covers it.

Best,
Mike

[Tassie_Devils]

Hi again Marja..... if that is the problem you are describing, then that's totally different and new [apart from Mike also saying it].

So, I'll leave you in the capable hands of LWM and JC ;)

Cheers, TAS

[erikguy]

Actually I think I know what she's referring to. I know that SWB comes with nothing automatically disabled or enabled when first installed and you have to enable the protection yourself via "Enable All". She mentioned Spybot... When I first installed SWB back during v2.6.1 I went through the list and noticed that some were red and some were black. I went through the help file and realized this meant that the red ones were unprotected products. This is when I realized that Spybot used the same protection scheme as SWB. When I disabled the protection in SWB I noticed that Spybot's protection was also affected. What I think happened to Marja is that she had Spybot installed with the "Immunity" function enabled and then installed SWB. She obviously didn't "Enable All" so she was only benefiting from Spybot's protection until she manually went in and checked all items herself. So a final note to all new users: Spyware Blaster does not install with protections enabled, AND it covers more products than Spybot. Good luck to all.

[Bubba]

{QUOTE-> Sorry, Bubba, I was quoting from obviously faulty personal memory -- the "front" page does read "0 items have protection disabled". <-QUOTE}Thanks Mike and I to never picked up on the previous comments. However....I now see the light and agree with you that there indeed appears to be a discrepancy....at least in the area your describing and on my system.

I normally do not use the....Prevent spyware/tracking cookies feature of SpywareBlaster but in order to understand what you brought up....I looked in to it. Normally I select only the ActiveX feature of the Internet Explorer Protection and...."0 items have protection disabled"....is what I have always seen.

However....if I de-select the ActiveX protection and then select the Prevent spyware/tracking cookies only feature....I then show 1213 items have protection disabled....which is the total of ActiveX CLSID entries. As a further step....I removed a site from the spyware/tracking cookie list and I now show 1214 items have protection disabled.

So....given the above info....it appears to me also that there is a discrepancy that I personally had never noticed.

Win2K Sp4....all updates.
IE 6 Sp1....all updates.

[javacool]

Hi,

Ah - I completely overlooked something in my response yesterday. :)

By default, SpywareBlaster will only count the unprotected cookie items under the Internet Explorer protection if the "Prevent spyware/tracking cookies." checkbox is checked. So if that box is unchecked, you would still have the "0 items have protection disabled" on the main status page, even though those cookie items would appear red. [This change was made because several users have stated they do not want to use the IE cookie blocking feature, yet I'm sure they also don't want to see "X items have protection disabled" all the time on the main status screen, so that particular count only counts the cookie items if that box is checked.]

Regarding the separate issue Bubba brought up, that's a minor graphical bug that will be fixed in the next release. :)

Best regards,

-Javacool

[Bubba]

{QUOTE-> Regarding the separate issue Bubba brought up, that's a minor graphical bug that will be fixed in the next release. <-QUOTE}Unless I'm mistaken....it's the same issue MikeBCda brought up and was confirming what he was mentioning. It also appears you were confirming what was brought.... "By default, SpywareBlaster will only count the unprotected cookie items under the Internet Explorer protection if the "Prevent spyware/tracking cookies."

So I'm not understanding where this "separate issue " is that you refer to ? ???

[javacool]

{QUOTE-> Unless I'm mistaken....it's the same issue MikeBCda brought up and was confirming what he was mentioning. It also appears you were confirming what was brought.... "By default, SpywareBlaster will only count the unprotected cookie items under the Internet Explorer protection if the "Prevent spyware/tracking cookies."

So I'm not understanding where this "separate issue " is that you refer to ? ??? <-QUOTE}

Ah - in the event that the ActiveX part of the Internet Explorer protection is disabled, the front status screen should show "Click here to enable protection" instead of a disabled items count, no matter what the status of the cookies protection is. In this case, it is possible for it to mistakenly show a disabled items count, which it shouldn't be if the ActiveX protection is unchecked. :)

So the potential counting issue is separate from something else you led me to discover - that when it shouldn't show the count it sometimes does.

Best regards,

-Javacool

[MikeBCda]

Hmm, maybe we're misunderstanding each other -- or maybe the misunderstanding's just mine.

I should have mentioned that I have both cookie and ActiveX protection enabled when I get the behavior I'd described. Unticking and then reticking cookie protection seems to clear things up for that IE session.

No problems with any ActiveX items, or any of the Restricted Sites (although I imagine the latter are a totally separate process anyway, since they're a separate window).

As JC said, it looks like we're looking at two different but probably related -- well, "bugs" is too strong, "oddities" is probably better -- things here.

[Bubba]

Removed Marja's post and created it's own separate thread.

This thread---> Understanding SpywareBlaster (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=237933#post237933)