OT: Agent Newsreader

Jon Bond said:

I'd love to see an adaware check too. I never install
stuff I don't know what it is, and yet I always pick up
spyware here and there - it just happens.

You need to change your security settings. You're allowing
unkown ActiveX controls to be installed without prompting.

At work 40% of our cases are Spyware/URL Hijackers/Popups
but our developers won't let us lock down IE, and our DNS
admin is too lazy to blackhole known spyware sites.

Quoted message said:

Right now I'm dealing with a particularly nasty piece of
malware known as Rads01.quadrogram (or something like
that). Its been pretty viral in nature - changing its
.exe name, running itself on startup and automatically
reopening (with a new file name) when I close it down via
task manager. I've adawared the thing at least 20 times,
keeps finding files, reg entries, running processes - and
it keeps coming back. and I KNOW I didn't install
anything screwy.

Try Hijack This. Don't fix anything unless you know for a
fact it shouldn't be on your machine. Instead of looking for
known spyware like Adaware or Spybot, Hijack This looks for
common ways for spyware to be run on your system, like the
Run key in the registry, etc. At work it picks up several of
our utilities so I have to pay attention to what I'm
removing but it has always fixed things that Adaware and
Spybot miss so I've stopped using those.

It's funny how no one in IT at work gets infected with
Spyware even though we don't have IE locked down, one would
think that we would be

Greg
--
Destroy your safe and happy lives Before it is too late The
battles we fought were long and hard Just not to be consumed
by rock'n'roll

pas said:

a friend of mine is having trouble with something like
that. There's also Spybot Search and Destroy, which I used
in conjunction with Adaware, and then there's a new one
called "bazooka"... any one have any experience with that
piece of software?

No, but be careful with Spybot, upon removing a couple of
different pieces of spyware it will corrupt the winsock2
key in the registry leaving you without the ability to use
most network apps like a browser or email until you either
fix the winsock2 key by deleting the winsock2 key,
uninstalling TCP/IP, rebooting, then reinstalling TCP/IP.
There are also a couple of utilities on the net that repair
the winsock2 key but I haven't tested them yet, I just quit
using Spybot instead.

Greg

--
Destroy your safe and happy lives Before it is too late The
battles we fought were long and hard Just not to be consumed
by rock'n'roll

Jon Bond said:

I'd love to see an adaware check too. I never install
stuff I don't know what it is, and yet I always pick up
spyware here and there - it just happens. Right now I'm
dealing with a particularly nasty piece of malware known
as Rads01.quadrogram (or something like that). Its been
pretty viral in nature - changing its .exe name, running
itself on startup and automatically reopening (with a new
file name) when I close it down via task manager. I've
adawared the thing at least 20 times, keeps finding files,
reg entries, running processes - and it keeps coming back.
and I KNOW I didn't install anything screwy.

I fired up an AV client and scanned my computer just for
you!

Local Scanner Log (6/19/2004 9:53:05 AM) File Scan
Summary Total Files Scanned 50756 Files Renamed File
Infections 0 Archives Scanned Files Cured 0 Files In
Archives Scanned Files Deleted 0 File Cure Errors Files
Moved 0 File Scan Errors

I run adaware and spybot every couple of months, pretty
much all it ever finds is cookies and an occasional
registry entry.

G.T. said:

pas said:

a friend of mine is having trouble with something like
that. There's also Spybot Search and Destroy, which I
used in conjunction with Adaware, and then there's a new
one called "bazooka"... any one have any experience with
that piece of software?

No, but be careful with Spybot, upon removing a couple of
different pieces of spyware it will corrupt the winsock2
key in the registry leaving you without the ability to use
most network apps like a browser or email until you either
fix the winsock2 key by deleting the winsock2 key,
uninstalling TCP/IP, rebooting, then reinstalling TCP/IP.
There are also a couple of utilities on the net that
repair the winsock2 key but I haven't tested them yet, I
just quit using Spybot instead.

Greg

Greg do you know anything about
kephyr.comspywarescannerOpen ↗ This one?

pas said:

Greg do you know anything about
kephyr.comspywarescannerOpen ↗ This one?

No, but it sounds like a respected tool. We get about 10 or
12 spyware cases a day so I'll give it a shot this week at
work. No spyware here to test it on since I'm on Mac OS X.

So far at work we've used Adaware, Spybot S&D, PestPatrol,
and Hijack This extensively along with our own homegrown
PestCleaner script.

Greg
--
Destroy your safe and happy lives Before it is too late The
battles we fought were long and hard Just not to be consumed
by rock'n'roll

"pas" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Greg do you know anything about
kephyr.comspywarescannerOpen ↗ This one?

I tried it. Didn't appear to work as well as AdAware +
Spybot. In fact, didn't appear to do a whole lot. Hit scan,
and [censored], it's done, reporting only the Windows Media Player
GUID log. (Not a real problem) I can't imagine that it
scanned all 200GB of my system in under 2 seconds.

Spybot 1.3 reported a bunch of bad actor cookies, and
AdAware 6 the same. Both of those take some minutes to run a
full scan.

I'm behind a Linsys router/firewall and an IpCop linux
firewall, so I'm not really too worried.

I have a spare machine around that I may load up with some
known spyware to try this thing further.

Pete

Pete said:

"pas" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Greg do you know anything about
kephyr.comspywarescannerOpen ↗ This one?

I tried it. Didn't appear to work as well as AdAware +
Spybot. In fact, didn't appear to do a whole lot. Hit
scan, and [censored], it's done, reporting only the Windows
Media Player GUID log. (Not a real problem) I can't
imagine that it scanned all 200GB of my system in under 2
seconds.

Spybot 1.3 reported a bunch of bad actor cookies, and
AdAware 6 the same. Both of those take some minutes to run
a full scan.

The above one probably only checks common places for
spyware to run from like Hijack This does, i.e., run key in
the registry, Startup folder, registered dlls, installed
ActiveX controls, etc. It makes scans quick and for spyware
I don't think you need to do a full system scan a la
AdAware and Spybot.

Greg

--
Destroy your safe and happy lives Before it is too late The
battles we fought were long and hard Just not to be consumed
by rock'n'roll

"G.T." <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Pete said:

"pas" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Greg do you know anything about
kephyr.comspywarescannerOpen ↗ This one?

I tried it. Didn't appear to work as well as AdAware +
Spybot. In fact, didn't appear to do a whole lot. Hit
scan, and [censored], it's done, reporting only the Windows
Media Player

GUID

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

log. (Not a real problem) I can't imagine that it
scanned all 200GB of my system in under 2

seconds.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Spybot 1.3 reported a bunch of bad actor cookies, and
AdAware 6 the

same.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Both of those take some minutes to run a full scan.

The above one probably only checks common places for
spyware to run from like Hijack This does, i.e., run key
in the registry, Startup folder, registered dlls,
installed ActiveX controls, etc. It makes scans quick and
for spyware I don't think you need to do a full system
scan a la AdAware and Spybot.

Greg

A bit of a test: Secondary machine sitting around (PII
400/Win2000 - haphazardly patched)

Nothing else loaded on it besides the operating system

Installed various known spyware/adware programs. Bonzi
CometCursor Gator/Gator eWallet WeatherScope (from GAIN)
BlazingTools Perfect Keylogger Actions Monitor

Surfed around to a few suspicious sites to enable cookie
placement.

Bazooka Spyware from kephyr.com scanner only found what was
resident in memory. Bonzi, Comet, Gator, WeatherScope.

Did not find existence of other malware. Actions Monitor or
BlazingTools keylogger.

Didn't find any of the cookies, or any reg entries It also
does not actually remove anything. It only gives you
instructions on manually removal. Regedit, etc.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with it. Not inclusive enough,
and doesn't actually remove anything.

Pete

Slacker said:

sittingduck said:

Monique Y. Mudama said:

On 2004-06-18, kantspel penned:

> Don't even get me started on how much better Firebird
> is over IE, I absolutly cannot use IE anymore.

Mmmmm firebird. Come for the popup blocking. Stay for
the tabs.

Indeed! Firefox kicks ass, I use tabs constantly, its a
great way to read forums and browse links on a site. It
helps to learn the KB shortcuts too, here is a page full
of them: texturizer.netkeyboard.htmlOpen ↗

Have just tried Firefox the last couple of days since
reading this. It's FAST, easy to migrate to and I like the
skins. It also has a better layout than IE when your display
res is higher. I run mine at 1024x768. Haven't quite figured
out what difference tabs versus New Window make to my life
yet. Am having trouble selecting text on pages and in the
google bar, and positioning the cursor. Very haphazard
whether or not it goes where you want it to. Curious. I like
it overall but the selection problems are a pain. Next step
is to try XNews.
--
Westie (Replace 'invalid' with 'yahoo' when replying.)

On 2004-06-20, Westie penned:

Quoted message said:

Have just tried Firefox the last couple of days since
reading this. It's FAST, easy to migrate to and I like the
skins. It also has a better layout than IE when your
display res is higher. I run mine at 1024x768. Haven't
quite figured out what difference tabs versus New Window
make to my life yet. Am having trouble selecting text on
pages and in the google bar, and positioning the cursor.
Very haphazard whether or not it goes where you want it
to. Curious. I like it overall but the selection problems
are a pain. Next step is to try XNews.

Tabs are wonderful if, like me, you tend to have 15-20
sites open at a minimum. You can group pages by browser
instance to find what you want. Also, you can bookmark them
as a group.

Not sure about the selection issue, but here's a tip you may
find interesting: if you right-click on an email address,
one of the options is to copy the email address. Same with
right-clicking on a link; it offers to copy the address for
you. (Actually, this is even better than copying the
straight text in many cases). I also adore the "copy image
location" feature.

--
monique

Westie said:

Have just tried Firefox the last couple of days since
reading this. It's FAST, easy to migrate to and I like the
skins. It also has a better layout than IE when your
display res is higher. I run mine at 1024x768. Haven't
quite figured out what difference tabs versus New Window
make to my life yet. Am having trouble selecting text on
pages and in the google bar, and positioning the cursor.
Very haphazard whether or not it goes where you want it
to. Curious. I like it overall but the selection problems
are a pain. Next step is to try XNews.

Very useful is holding shift or Ctrl while clicking a link,
I read some forums, and I can open all posts that I want to
read in tabs by clicking the ones I want while holding Ctrl.
This opens them all in separate tabs, which I can simply
click through one by one as I go through them. This would be
especially nice if your connection is slow, by the time you
read the first couple of "tabs" the rest would be
downloaded.

Xnews is really excellent, but keep in mind many of the more
advanced features can only be accessed by editing .ini
files. It is very configurable, and it may or may not be to
your liking "out of the box". Be patient and you will be
able to set it up almost any way you like.

--
6/20/2004
7:24 AM [GMT-8]

Jon Bond said:

I'd love to see a virus scan of your computer. One of my
friends here who works for our school's online service
(which mostly handles virus removal and prevention)
thought he didn't need a virus scanner because he was
too smart to fall for virus stuff. He's a damn smart kid
too - double major computer and civil engineering, and
doing well.

Intelligent does not always equate to smart.

Quoted message said:

He lasted about a month before he got kicked off the
network for spreading viruses - he had more than 5 on his
computer when we checked it over.

I rest my case. It takes some going to attract 5 viruses.

Quoted message said:

I'd love to see an adaware check too. I never install
stuff I don't know what it is, and yet I always pick up
spyware here and there - it just happens.

Either tighten up your settings and / or use a
different browser.

Quoted message said:

[censored] happens man, ESPECIALLY if you're running windows.
And yes, a lot of that [censored] slips right by most firewalls

If you think "[censored] slips right by most firewalls", then you
have a poor understanding of what firewalls actually do.

Quoted message said:

- my school is behind a firewall, plus filters email for
viruses (viri?)

Viruses. Viri is the Latin for 'men'. If the plural were
virii (as some people write it), then the singular would
be virius.

Staying virus-free is actually pretty simple, provided you
know what you're doing and you take some precautions. I've
not used AV software for years, and surprisingly have
remained virus-free, even whilst using M$ machines.

The problem is, as you've just demonstrated, that AV
software is viewed as a panacea, when in reality, it's
actually not that good. A little bit of common sense is far
more effective. YMMV.

Westie said:

Have just started to use Forte Agent newsreader today
having come from OE. I've heard that it's a good NG Reader
and I guess there is a learning curve, but what on Earth is
it that you Agent users like about this app?

I use it as much for email as usenet. It is the email client
that I get on with best - it threads email so much more
preductably than any other client I have tried. Rather
useful with <> 400 emails a day!

I tend to use it in "offline mode", even when I have a live
internet feed.

What I think you may want to set is options -> general
preferences -> online operation -> general settings and look
at the box "viewing unretrieved messages when offline" and
set the button to go get it rather than mark.
--
Paul Matthews [email hidden] hepcats.co.ukhepcats.co.ukOpen ↗

"bomba" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Jon Bond said:

I'd love to see a virus scan of your computer. One of my
friends here who works for our school's online service
(which mostly handles virus removal and prevention)
thought he didn't need a virus scanner because he was
too smart to fall for virus stuff. He's a damn smart kid
too - double major computer and civil engineering, and
doing well.

Intelligent does not always equate to smart.

Quoted message said:

He lasted about a month before he got kicked off the
network for spreading viruses - he had more than 5 on
his computer when we checked it over.

I rest my case. It takes some going to attract 5 viruses.

College network with a LOT of very stupid people downloading
viruses. Plus drunken browsing tends to lower your guard a
bit... and the boy was rushing a frat at the time, so he did
a lot of drunken browsing... (and drunken puking, and
drunken homework, and drunken....)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I'd love to see an adaware check too. I never install
stuff I don't know what it is, and yet I always pick up
spyware here and there - it just happens.

Either tighten up your settings and / or use a different
browser.

Just 'cause I use swiss cheese... er, excuse me, IE....

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

[censored] happens man, ESPECIALLY if you're running windows.
And yes, a lot of that [censored] slips right by most
firewalls

If you think "[censored] slips right by most firewalls", then
you have a poor understanding of what firewalls
actually do.

I don't pretend to be a firewall expert - I do know,
however, that we had a firewall (hardware, not software -
although we experimented with those too) set up on my home
network, and although we never got any of the MS-exploit
worms, we did still get a couple viruses - granted, my mom
is completely clueless when it comes to not downloading
files ("but its from somebody I know!"😉.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

- my school is behind a firewall, plus filters email for
viruses (viri?)

Viruses. Viri is the Latin for 'men'. If the plural were
virii (as some people write it), then the singular would
be virius.

Yeah, was too lazy to look it up, but thought viruses was
right. Note the "7:18AM" post time - that wasn't me waking
up early. Damn sleep disorders...

Quoted message said:

Staying virus-free is actually pretty simple, provided you
know what you're doing and you take some precautions. I've
not used AV software for years, and surprisingly have
remained virus-free, even whilst using M$ machines.

The problem is, as you've just demonstrated, that AV
software is viewed as a panacea, when in reality, it's
actually not that good. A little bit of common sense is
far more effective. YMMV.

I've also, on my personal computer, have never gotten a
virus. A ton of annoying adware, yes, but never a virus.
Only twice has my antivirus software popped up, and that was
on downloaded email messages that had a virus in their
payload (but needed to be run to activate it). Except for
their potential to hog system resources, it just seems like
a smart thing to
do. Nah, its no panacea, no silver bullet - but it allows
me to not worry about whether that file I accidentally
downloaded at 6 or 7AM for a free trial of something
quite possibly had a virus in it - peace of mind is
worth the fairly reasonable subscription price to me.

Jon Bond

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 10:36:23 -0600, "Monique Y. Mudama"
<[email hidden]> scribbled:

Quoted message said:

On 2004-06-20, Westie penned:

Quoted message said:

Have just tried Firefox the last couple of days since
reading this. It's FAST, easy to migrate to and I like
the skins. It also has a better layout than IE when your
display res is higher. I run mine at 1024x768. Haven't
quite figured out what difference tabs versus New Window
make to my life yet. Am having trouble selecting text on
pages and in the google bar, and positioning the cursor.
Very haphazard whether or not it goes where you want it
to. Curious. I like it overall but the selection problems
are a pain. Next step is to try XNews.

Tabs are wonderful if, like me, you tend to have 15-20
sites open at a minimum. You can group pages by browser
instance to find what you want. Also, you can bookmark them
as a group.

Unless you accidentally click wrong and close the
whole freaking group, rendering all your web surfing
moot. 🙂 (doh!)

[snip]

-Slash
--
"Ebert Victorious"
-The Onion

Slash said:

Unless you accidentally click wrong and close the
whole freaking group, rendering all your web surfing
moot. 🙂 (doh!)

LOL! Been there done that!

--
6/21/2004
7:19 PM [GMT-8]

On 2004-06-21, Slash penned:

Quoted message said:

Unless you accidentally click wrong and close the
whole freaking group, rendering all your web surfing
moot. 🙂 (doh!)

I usually take that as a sign that I should be doing
something more worthwhile, anyway =)

--
monique

sittingduck said:

Quoted message said:

Unless you accidentally click wrong and close the
whole freaking group, rendering all your web surfing
moot. 🙂 (doh!)

LOL! Been there done that!

Fortunately, Opera saves your sessions.