Just Installed spywareblaster

and already i got questions it all seems to be working ok but i was wondering - if i disable ActiveX in Internet Explorer do i need Spywareblaster?

does Spywareblaster just deal with ActiveX or does it stop trojans and spyware trying to get into the computer by other means and routes?

how about downloaded software and files? if i download files from the internet and they contains spyware (kazaa and bitTorrent are the obvious examples here) will Spywareblaster detect and prevent them from infecting?

thanks

 

it stops a bunch of nasties from installing. if u disable active x in IE then u should be good but i would suggest still having spywareblaster.

 

thanks for the response Cheater87 - most of the time i use Opera Browser but sometimes i need to use Explorer. i am experimenting with disabling ActiveX - it doesn't seem to make any difference to surfing - do we need ActiveX enabled for anything in particular?

 

In my case only for Windows Update...

Other than that, i use Opera and sometimes Firefox with very few issues if any.


snowbound

 

maybe opera or firefox could offer a replacement for windows too, Snowbound

i did have one funny with Opera - i was reading a security faq on their website and clicked on "Can Opera users be infected by the Nimda worm?"
while i was reading that topic my antivirus program suddenly alerted me, stating that i had just been infected by the nimda worm - i decided to treat it as a spurious alert, somehow triggered by the opera faq and not a genuine virus - hope i was right - somewhat weird though.

 

That is strange...

I'm probably going to get in trouble talking about this in this forum but was this the page?( too many thises)

http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml?index=286

If so, not a peep out of my AV when clicking on it.


snowbound

 

yes

yes that's the link - i know cos when i clicked on it i got the alert again!

i use avg free - it seems to be detecting it in the opera cache - i deleted it this time just to be safe. i think opera must be putting a fake virus into the cache as a demo? - it says in the faq that you can't be infected by it's presence in the cache.

still it's a weird thing to do?

the nimda worm is an email virus i don't think you can get it from surfing a web page? WEIRD

 

Re: yes

Yes as far as i know it is a mass-mailing worm...

Why avg finds it, i have no idea. An anomaly for sure.


snowbound

 

anomalies make me nervous Snowbound (and they are difficult to spell)

this whole business of virus, trojan and malware detection is a fraught business.

i started off with ad-aware it detected a few spyware objects. then i read on other forums that ad-aware doesnt find em all. i really want to keep the number of security programs to a minimum. i tried ewido which is a new one and supposedly very good. i did a scan and it told me i had a paradrop trojan (whatever that is) i instructed it to delete it and then after realised that it wasn't on my c drive but on my d drive which is a system recovery partition.
now i wonder what ewido deleted? then after the scan my system froze, after reboot i uninstalled ewido.

i then installed some anonymous surfing software from a magazine cover disk - it was incredibly slow - after i had tried surfing with it i did a scan with ad-aware and it said i had been infected with cool web search, ad-aware seems to have deleted it successfully. anyhow i uninstalled the anon software. i think i may have picked up cool web while surfing thru an anon proxy?

then i thought well i really need more backup for ad-aware in case it is missing stuff. having tried and rejected ewido i then shortlisted spywareblaster, winpatrol and webroot's spy sweeper. (that costs money though ) i looked at the winpatrol forums and got the impression that the product was bug ridden as the developer seems to be releasing a new version every other day.

i want a product that's free, well written, stable, reliable and does the detection job thoroughly (don't want much)

i'm hoping that spywareblaster is all those things but i still want to add one more program perhaps a combined realtime monitor and scanner like webroot or counterspy.

it's a question of trust really, do you have programs to check that the other programs are really doing their detection work properly, when it comes to spyware scanners less is not more - then again the more programs you add to your computer the more you increase the possiblity of conflicts.

a detection program is only as good as the programmer who wrote it. so 4 badly written programs are not better than one well written one.

if i'm not careful i will end up with 6 firewalls 6 antivirus 4 trojan detectors and 8 spyware scanners all going at the same time, all checking on each other

 

and a whole lot of conflicts too!

I use,

Spywareblaster, Spywareguard, Adaware, Spybot S&D, SpyCop, NOD32, ZA+, Boclean and Wormguard.

IMHO layered protection is the name of the game.

Since this is the Javacool support forum i'll leave it at that as i don't want to mods to come in and make me go stand in the corner for rambling on here about other issues.


snowbound

 

thanks for your feedback, Snowbound - i've decided to continue this topic in the privacy software forum so i can broaden the discussion out - feel free to add your thoughts.
regards
toploader