Laguna2,

What about all those hundreds of other ulr's in that same registry directory? It really seems like a list of bad sites from internet explorer (like your restricted sites)?

If I could delete that one, I guess I could delete them all. But before I get some confirmation on that, I won't do it.

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I almost hate to admit it, but I think I agree with sidmel. I think I like this program. Now, if they decide to charge for it once it's done beta testing, then I'll probably not get it. but for now... well, finally something from Microsoft I like.

So here’s a non-game item from Microsoft that people seem to like… would this be one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

Ok I just googled around. Keep it!
These are your trusted and restricted sites.
My fault. Sorry.

This reduces my ideas how to get rid of this to zero.

OK, no problem Laguna2.

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Nicholas - I had a similar problem with the coolwebsearch virus - very hard to get rid of. Not sure if your problem with southbeachday is a variant on this virus or some other problem.

There is a great tool called hijackthis that I had to use to finally get coolwebseach off my PC. You may want to google "hijackthis". You should get links to a number of security/anti-virus BBs where you can do a little research and ask some questions and get some help.

Good luck!

Southbeachday was one of the things I couldn't find with Hijackthis...

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Now I got an automatically opening site from http: // www . morespecialreports . com

I want to keep using INternet Explorer, I won't switch to another browser. Ain't there nowhere a program that just blocks sites after you give the URL, period???

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Can you install/run MS's anti-spyware while leaving Adaware installed, or do you have to remove Adaware first? I would think, since Adaware isn't doing any front-end checking, I can leave it as-is and install/run MS's product as well, right?

__________________
. . . My moustache is touching my brain!!!!

Wally, I think you can.

I have found a way to avoid the loading of the websites I don't like by altering my HOSTS file in windows. For the sites that I already covered, now I only get an empty browser window opening from time to time, no longer it's, uhm, "contents".

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Report from the peanut gallery. You all can always trust me to offer the perspective of the ignorant, ham-handed klutz in these matters.

My new computer (XP professional) runs SpyBot, AdAware and Hijackthis!, plus Norton (set on high).

I downloaded the new MS beta last night after running everything else first (after checking for updates). I had to let Norton give permission for several things and didn't turn anything off. Not that I'd know how to in the first place.

It was effortless. Knock me over with a feather. When I ran the full, deep scan it found two things in the registry that nothing else found. Afterward, both SpyBot and AdAware seemed to work just fine. I didn't try Hijackthis! after downloading, but then, the program scares me anyway (It requires you to understand what is going on down in there, and I really don't).

If this thing is as good as it appears to be, I will probably buy it if they charge. I mean, I already buy Symantec, so what the heck.

__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Interesting.

(I wouldn't trust it very far though... Just a guess, but I bet it's pretty easy to disable the realtime protection and perhaps render it unusable.)

I don't really trust anything in this area, anyway. But with apologies to those of you in the real know, there are lots of us out here who would drop a dime to get decent protection without spending all our time keeping the dangnabbed thing safe. While I have no objection to tinkering occasionally with my car, its basic purpose for me is to get me somewhere. Same thing with my computer.

__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Oh yey! Now that microsoft FINALLY offers a cure-type solution for it's problematic software, everyone starts praising it, as if it was the second coming of Jesus, or at least another Starwars episode. Why bother with facts, when you can enjoy the "clean interface" and...

Well, let's bother for a second. First off - this is not microsoft software! Shock! Fear! Once again, MS, out of its infinite coffers, reaches out to the community and buys whatever seems best. The initial developer was GeCAD Software. Hurray microsoft!

What's next on the list. Remember netscape? No, well, let's go on then. Microsoft plans regular updates for this software kit. So far "monthly", which is not enough. Also the release of the final version is scheduled for mid-spring... So you'll have to wait a bit for it.

As always, I advise switching to a free system, like linux or BSD, which practices security, not damage-control.

0.02€ rant.

__________________
Let me ask you something--if someone's lying, are their pants really on fire?
-- Jerry Seinfeld

Not really. The real-time protection protects you from adware that you get when you visit malicious websites and such. You can always do a scan in your own time without having real-time protection, just like Spybot and Ad-aware.

We criticize Microsoft when they screw up because we want a high standard of their products. What's wrong with giving them credit when they get it right??

Yes, we said that on the first page. What's the big deal? So they bought the company that made it and rebranded the software. What's wrong with that? At least they bought a product that was actually worth it and are now offering it. Hardly anybody even knew about GIANT software's antispyware product. Now everyone does. And it's original developers are still intact, and better off.

Wrong. They just released updated spyware definitions today, after releasing the beta yesterday or 2 days ago. Shows me they're pretty committed to it. What would have been the point of updating monthly if spyware evolves daily?

What's wrong with that? Do you really have to ask? Ever played monopoly? They are now planning on taking money from ad-aware, spybot (?) and probably a lot of AV-companies out there, because they offer their software for free! Others can't do that... People are going to lose jobs over this...

And about monthly updates just saying "Wrong" doesn't make me wrong. This is still a BETA. Although I do admit, that it doesn't sound reasonable, that's what I've heard.

__________________
Let me ask you something--if someone's lying, are their pants really on fire?
-- Jerry Seinfeld

Are you kidding? On what basis are they going to take money from Spybot's makers and Ad-aware's makers? First of all, Patrick Kolla (creator of Spybot) offers his software for free, so they aren't losing money if Microsoft eats up market share. Ad-aware offers a free version and a paid version, so other companies CAN and DO charge for their antispyware programs. Ever heard of PestPatrol? A paid and very popular antispyware program? Spysubtract? Or countless others? Do a little research. A LOT of companies produce commercial antispyware packages. Not to mention that Norton, McAfee and Trend Micro also include basic spyware protection with their antivirus packages.

This is of course setting aside the fact that we don't even know yet whether Microsoft is going to make this antispyware app free or not.

I didn't just say wrong. I explained why, and you didnt counter it. Here it is again:

Umm... Spybot updates about once monthly. And it works exceedingly well.

(I'd still want Adaware as well if I ran Winduhs though.)

As for this MS thing... Let's see how it pans out. It might turn out to require a bunch of security updates, it might be a poorly-made piece of garbage like IE that MS can never fix up, or it might actually be an effective product.

It worked for me. Found more garbage.

Adaware SE, Spybot, Hijack this, now MS AntiSpyware

Now, I need to find a way to block the stupid Java Trojan .jar files from uploading on my comp. Turning Java off doesn't work. The files come from imbedded web pages. What pages they are is a mystery.
I have to use http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ to detect them. Then remove them manually.:x

__________________
Jami Cat
Astronomy is looking up... :)

Just don't make it personal... unless you are an MS representative.

I have done a little research, and I would argue that I do know what I'm talking about, but this is obviously pointless, as you seem to have your mind set.

To argue just a little, maybe for the sake of others, I have to say the following:
The difference between companies that market and sell (or license out for free, and make money on... ads and whatnot) their antispyware solutions, and MS is that MS has a HUGE user base that desires this software. Suppose if MS was to offer a free allternative, many people would content with it and look no further. The smaller companies then die out. The big question is - Does MS have monopoly on excellence or are they simply not playing fair? One could take any side, but, seeing as people will probably not feel any need for abundant protection and trust MS, I find this to be a case of antitrust.

Again, there's no need to make it personal. I don't care much either way, I just think that people aren't paying attention when they are being "served".

EDIT: Oh, and about your argument on the update frequency, I obviosly forgot to mention that I find it invalid because of the "BETA" status of the project. However the only reason, apart from hearing that it is so, I believe that these updates wouldn't be as frequent as one might expect, is microsofts history of being slow on WU-front. I wouldn't be suprised if these updates were as frequent as weekly.

__________________
Let me ask you something--if someone's lying, are their pants really on fire?
-- Jerry Seinfeld

This has many other positive consequences. A lot of people might start using antispyware protection, which is a good thing. And we are still arguing over a moot point because we do not know yet whether it will be a free solution or not. Also as any computer-savvy person will tell you, you should NOT try to have only one spyware solution on your PC. What one doesnt catch, the others can catch. And what makes you think that the simple fact that Microsoft is offering that software that people will just flock to it and abandon other competing products? It's obviously not the case as Quicken is more popular than MS Money, or Google is much more popular than MSN search, and the fact that Gmail is much better than Hotmail and people are desperately trying to sign up to it even though it's still in beta, and is ad-supported.

And I don't see the problem with people flocking to a superior product until another superior product comes that grabs them. MS antispyware is the only free solution (so far) that offers real-time protection. A total of 0 other antispyware products do that. And it managed to pick off some extra items that Spybot and Ad-aware didn't see, as documented by others here.

I'm not taking it personally, I'm just not a fan of just drubbing Microsoft just for the heck of it. When they release a good product, I'm happy about it and I applaud them. When they screw up, I give it to them.

I downlaoded and tried this program out and I'm happy with it. It has managed to remove things that no other product has picked up before (Girafa for instance) - so I'll stick with it alongside all the other spyware detectors I've got.

__________________
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Spybot has their teatimer that alerts you to an attempt at a regestry change.

Teatimer also warns you when malware in its database tries to install istself. There are a few false positives, but only a few.

Tranquility wrote:
Spywareblaster and Pest Patrol both have free resident live protection - I know because I use them both. MS refuse so far to offer their antispyware for folk like me who paid for Win 98 and IE (although I did get a free download of IE6) As far as I can make out malware like CoolWebSearch, LinkGrabber 99 and others exploit IE's fishnet tights to enable them to download their garbage. Is it so unreasonable to expect MS to clean up their act?

__________________
By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

SpywareGuard, not SpywareBlaster.

PestPatrol is an anti-trojan IIRC, not sure I'd trust it with Spyware.

Webroot does make something called SpySweeper which I've heard is good (via computer security forums)... But that and the MS anti-spyware app are as far as I'd go with commercial anti-spyware stuff. There is a heck of a lot of "fraudware" out there, and that stuff will mess you up badly.

I'm aware of tea timer, I thought it protects only against registry changes because that's the only warning it ever gave me. My bad.

SpywareBlaster doesn't actually offer real-time protection. It provide a list of malicious URLs that it adds to the restricted sites list, adjusts some settings to prevent drive-by downloads, can disable flash ads and backup the hosts file. All very useful functions, but it's done using capabilities inherent in IE in the first place. It's not real-time protection because the program isn't running in the background.

PestPatrol is available for free now? Link?

Of course not. I was only a little irritated because of the needless bashing of a good product simply because it came out of the Microsoft coffers.

Webroot SpySweeper isn't free.

Ironically, the best of the antispyware products are the free offerings.

And I didn't know about SpywareGuard GJ. Thanks for pointing it out. I want to give it a shot.

More good news from Redmond:

Microsoft to release antivirus tool for free.

It's obviously not going to be a very robust tool initially but it could catch up with the other products eventually.

Also notice the different options for the antispyware product - I think it's quite likely that they don't charge for the program, but only charge for the real-time protection, like Lavasoft.

EDIT: BTW they also seem to be having daily updates. I've had the program autoupdate twice in the last 2 days. It seems they are committed to the product.

Tranquility:

PestPatrol, An error on my part, it's a free 30 day trial ops: I don't know if it's possible to uninstall and re-install after the 30 days are up.

Gullible Jones :

Spywareblaster

I also use Spybot and Adaware.

Edit: Have now downloaded SpywareGuard and will see how it goes Thanks.

I'm having a real fight just now with both CoolWebSearch (mywebserver.net) and LinkGrabber 99 - anyone got any ideas. I tried CWShredder and Hijackthis - thought I had cured the problems but they keep coming back on start up.

__________________
By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

Go to safe mode and run your anti-spyware programs from there. I've had some luck removing stubborn programs that way.

Info on CoolWebSearch.

I wonder how effective SpywareGuard can be. It hasn't had an update since January last year... I don't bother with it any more.

__________________
"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov