Spyware infection, courtesy of Trainorders.

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Just watch out, Ad-Aware and Spybot both trigger up a few false positives, and if you delete EVERYTHING they want you to delete, you will have problems. It’s OK if it’s just a cookie. But sometimes it flags a critical program.

–Randy

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Also, you should be aware that what one program calls spyware, others don’t. Some will label all cookies from certain sites as “problems” when in fact they are simply harmless tracking cookies to determine who gets paid a commission when an ad is clicked.

For example a visitor to one of my websites sees an ad for Model Railroader Magazine and clicks on it. A tracking cookie will let the third party that manages the affiliate ad program know that the visitor came from a link on my site and my website would get a small commission. (That’s how many if not most content-filled websites stay alive.) Some anti-spyware programs treat these cookies as spyware, though they are not…

So it is possible that you might run one program and find so-called “problems” that the Microsoft program or another wisely chose to ignore.

Wayne

23

Randy and Joe,I am setting behind a hard case firewall(don’t know the name as my son installed it) and Road Runner Business connection.I been on the Internet now for 4 years and yet to any type of virus and I go where I please on the net…I never open mail from spammers nor do I need to worry about pop ups because I have a pop up stopper installed…So in my case its not a matter of opening spam or clicking on pop ups.A lot of the spy ware comes from some of the more popular on line hobby shops and popluar railroad sites including some forums…[:(]

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Ryan,

Thanks for the excellent tutorial on spyware. I have copied it and will use it for future reference.

Tom

25

Hello my Friend!

No problem! I have had first hand experience with removing this type of infection on too many PC’s to count! They all have involved no less than countless hours of labor each in their removal, very time consuming for the very hard ones to get rid of!

All in a days railroading!!!

And trying to help out where I can!

  • Ryan
26

This is one thing I don’t have to battle at work, thankfully!

If machine gets too many problems, Norton Ghost ot the rescue.

However, I’m sure you know that we support the pc’s for our families, our friends, their friends, and anyone who thinks they may have known us in a past life. [:o)] I have dealt with some spyware problems but it’s really super to have the repairs all in one neat little checklist.

Thanks again.

tom