Spyware protection

[.Maleficus.]

Alright, my computer was booting slow so I decided to get Autoruns, to see if I could get rid of some of the crap bogging it down. I noticed that "startkey" was loading up twice, which happens to be a keylogger. Greaaaaat... So far all I've done is disabled the entry, so it won't start up anymore, but WTF. It's been there since June and none of the scanners found it. avast!, Windows Defender, Spybot S&D, all didn't find it. Should I just fork out for some paid-for scanners, or what. It's pretty sad that 3 scanners couldn't find a known keylogger.

[Crazy Buddhist]

Mal,

Unfortunately, Yes.

I have written internet guides on the subject of keeping your machine safe for free for years. It is now my honest opinion it is not worth even trying. The cost in terms of wasted time, potentially lost information and annoying clean installs has finally tipped to the wrong side of the balance.

The real rot seems to have set in when Symantec bought Sygate - just to stop it being available. Since then the whole security issue has become harder and harder to get right for free.

AVG became ineffective about 3 years ago. I switched allegiance to Antivir which is the best of the free bunch but now also inneffective. Spybot and Adaware also no longer function effectively.

Six months ago I came to this conclusion and for the first time in my life purchased a paid for product and recommended my friends and family do the same. I chose Kaspersky Internet Security Suite which is very, very effective and certainly no resource hog - unlike Norton (always has been the worst bloatware in the world except for windows itself) and McAfee (why - oh why - didn't they keep it tight? - used to be so damn good).

Now have a clean machine and no worries. I have also started refusing to offer computer support to friends unless they have a paid for security suite.

In the current climate my advice is go for a paid product or go Linux. I intend to switch to Linux by the end of the year for everything and have one non-internet accessable windows machine for the stuff I have to run on that OS.

Matthew

[Luke122]

I've been hearing good things about Kaspersky also.. I might have to test it on a box for awhile here too..

Mal, check out "startuplist" to show all running apps/services, and where they are starting from. It's great for troubleshooting, and free also.

[Crazy Buddhist]

I've been hearing good things about Kaspersky also.. I might have to test it on a box for awhile here too..

Their virus engine has always been the most tightly coded of the bunch. The interface you can vary from "I'm a noob do it for me" to "I'm an expert don't even think about it without asing me first".

Even though I'm an expert I went for the noob option and haven't looked back. It's also quite happy to be installed on both partitions of a dual boot system with the same key and runs flawlessly. Blocks a lot of bad downloads in places I didnt expect to find them.

I put it through it's paces every now and then by going to a bunch or warez and hacks sites and it performs without fault.

My other main security tip these days is never go within a mile of Myspace. aka "sPyspace".

[xRyokenx]

I'm not cloning my drive onto my new HDD, I'm just doing a clean install. My idea is, just a firewall possibly on Windows, and I'm gonna have a ****load of security apps on a Linux partition, and I'll surf the web and stuff on there. I'll look into Kaspersky though.

Norton is evil, I don't like them and how they come with every new PC these days, stupid ass trials. What was Sygate? An online malware listing page or something? Sucks. This is why I don't like big business in such vital areas, they **** over everyone just to make money.

[Crazy Buddhist]

Norton is evil, I don't like them and how they come with every new PC these days, stupid ass trials. What was Sygate? An online malware listing page or something? Sucks.

No Sygate was one of the best, safest, most tightly coded and user controllable firewalls available - and it was available free. It was taking huge market share from Norton and the other companies. Semantec bought it, took it off the market and just stopped developing it. You can still download old versions from www.oldversion.com but the hackerz and warez guys have broken it as the code is not updated so it is next to useless.

Sucks even more now you know the story I bet.

[xRyokenx]

Yes it does. I'm curious, what firewall out there is still really good? I tried and didn't like ZoneAlarm, it died after a little while, it just stopped working, I got Comodo but it wouldn't let TeamSpeak run, but I think it just needed to run a little. Before I connect to the web, I'm gonna get everything installed later, all my security apps and everything are on a DVD, let's get this ****er locked down tight to keep these losers out.

[Mitternacht]

One time I had all kinds of trojans that would run as the computer was on, even in safe mode. So I hooked it up in slave mode on another pc and did the scan on that drive. It worked first try. Hope that may help you. btw, I used Ad-Aware.

[xRyokenx]

That should. I really do hope I can make this thing fairly secure, ugh, I hate freakin' dealing with this, it's just annoying and unnecessary. We should declare war on idiots that make viruses, not terrorists, lol... but then again, they're both pretty much the same, just different places, huh.

[D1337]

I would go with nod32 if you are going to be buying anything, it is by far one of the best even though most of the "average" computer users dont know about it.