Is what I'm doing good enough to prevent a browser hijack?

I have the Windows XP firewall enabled,Zone Alarm(Firewall) enabled,I run Spybot and adaware 2 or 3 times a week with frequent updates,and I have Hijack this.I also disconnect my DSL when long period of inactivity and put my cmoputer in stanby when not in use.I also clean out my cookies,temporary files,and clear history often,and I have spybot set to lock my internet start page until I tell it not to.

 

Sounds like with spybot set to prevent browser hijacking that should address the specific browser home page hijacker issue.

But other than that it appears that your set up re: spyware is primarily reactive and after the fact rather than preventative. Browser hijackers aren't the only things to be wary of if you have ActiveX enabled if you surf with IE.

If you do use IE, besides recommending tightening up its settings so at least at a minimum, "safe" Active X controls are set to prompt, I'd also recommend getting Javacool's free (donations would be appreciated, though) SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard. SB is not a running program but blocks various spyware stuff. SG is a running program and provides reat time monitoring. You can check out Javacool's support forum here at Wilders.

Spybot S&D does indeed have an "immunize" function and it is a good app indeed. But even Spybot's author includes a note in the program that advises SoywareBlaster users that they are proactively protected against a greater number of things with SpywareBlaster than Spybot.

So....check out these other apps if you wish. It costs nothing and provides some additional preventative protection. (Disabling ActiveX in IE is certainly effective also for a lot of spyware exploits but diisabling ActiveX doesn't address cookies and some other things you might find piggybacking with other programs you might download as does SB and SG, respectively, for example.)

Adaware Plus I believe also provides preventive protection in real time. It's payware and I haven't tried it myself so can't advise regarding that. But that is another alternative for a proactive preventative approach to spyware. Perhaps someone else can discuss Adaware Plus from their own experiences and/or provide a comparison/contrast for the various prevention oriented apps..

 

I agree with sig on all except the above. The homepage lock, whether that is done through Spybot S&D or SpywareBlaster, does not protect you from anything that writes the changes directly to the registry (and that is what most hijackers do).
It only prevents users from doing it from the IE Control Panel.

Read this on how to minimize the risk of infection: http://boards.cexx.org/viewtopic.php?t=957.

Regards,

Pieter

 

For registry protection we can recommend RegistryProt found here. It is free and it works!

Best wishes

 

Thanks for clarifying that, Pieter. In that case the homepage lock feature of those products is ineffective against the vast majority of homepage hijackers. Good to know.