Pass a bill to castrate the programmer who made it.

Print out all the lines of code and make the programmer eat it.

Lets see what pops up after that!

untrue.
I work in a computer repair shop, and the most common cause for people bringing their machines in is spyware. Spyware can not only steal system resourses, but corrupt your winsock files, and make it impossible for you to browse the internet. Spybot WAS an awesome program, not only did it remove but it BLOCKED thousands of bad products. but the college kid who wrote it, isnt making updates for it anymore, or the automatic update feature is broken, so we use ad-aware and that seems to work just fine. the new version of ad-aware even fixes some browser hijacks, where your home page is changed without your permission.

my spybot seems to update just fine?

Dude, I work on spyware infected computers all the time. No they do not damage the system, but there are some nasty ones like VX2 out there that burrow into windows and are a pain in the a** to get rid of. If you don't dig deep into windows and remove every trace of it, it re installs itself after the system is rebooted.

I stand corrected. I just downloaded the latest version of spybot, and it updates just fine. I had an older version before and updates were always sluggish, and depended on if there was bandwidth available on his update server. It was not working for the longest time, so I quit using it. Good to see it's up and running again, Spybot is an awesome program. It has blocking, AND scheduling, all in a FREE tool!

IMHO Spysweeper 3.x is the most thorough (adware/spyware) removal tool available right now, and it has more robust signature database than any other application. Spysweeper also detects a lot of programs/traces that AdAware & Spybot seem to miss everytime. IMHO you need to use at least 4 different applications to clean systems that are mucked up with internet garbage, and I've been cleaning 30+ pc's a week now using the combination of Spysweeper 3.0, AdAware SE 1.05, Spybot 1.3, and HiJackThis 1.98.2

Before you start the cleaning process, download the Option Explicit Winsock Tool for Win 98/ME/2K/XP in case you cannot access the internet after removing certain pieces of spyware/adware.

Empty your temp and temporary internet files folder for each account (start > run > cleanmgr), then reset your IE security settings. Be sure to install and update each spyware/adware utility mentioned above, and reboot to safe mode to run the scans. Run HiJack This last, and be sure you know what you are removing. In some cases you will have to find the files manually to delete them. If you have any questions about your HiJack This log, please email it to me or post them for review.

Reboot your system back into normal mode, then run an online virus scan using Housecall and Panda.

One way to reduce the amount of spayware/adware that could hop on your system is to update to SP2 if you are using Windows XP and/or disable ActiveX. You should also use Sun Java since the MS Java VM is full of security holes. Another way to help prevent spyware is to switch over to Firefox.

I hope this helps.

Firefox rocks!

I can browse through pron and haxor sites without getting any crap. Try that with IE!

* disclaimer *
Any implied illegal acts is fictitious in all forms. Statements such as these are made to use as examples only.

booga
Seems like you list everything there is on the subject, however have you personnally tested and verify , otherwise to post things like that based on here say or gossip does no one any good. Many of us depends on you experts in making our decisions.
Thanks

Browsing them is not illegal, however USING that information MAY be.

Spyware is definitely bad for your computer. It's also totally malicious. Anything that invades your privacy by using your normal browsing activities as an excuse to leach information from your personal computer and install invasive, annoying and resource depleting software should be illegal.

I'm starting a militia to hunt down and terminate spyware makers and their families.

Down with spyware

whats all this complaining about spyware? what is it i dont have any of that.. or viruses.. if u dont do anything stupid you should be fine. i just ran AVG for the first time in like 5months and 0 virueses and i never have spyware either

Yeah I try not to do stupid stuff, but, but, but...

Even an innocent Google search can get one the 'Saber Tooth Crotch Crickets' if one is not on top of one's game. Man I got the munchies all the sudden for something w/Grey Poupon on it...

Zoid

i havent had that problem

spy sweeper is indeed the best . it works more like a antivirus that is always working in the background. so yes it uses more resource then a program u only run after your infected. spysweeper has shields that are always running when its active. these shields catch the nasty stuff before it infects u . I have tested many of these and can say with out a doubt spy sweeper is the best. however i also run lavasoft adaware somtimes to just to double check. as far as how much resource spysweeper uses. its minimal i get no change in speeds for gaming or website surfing and no score change in 3d benchmarks if i have spysweeper on or off. i have 1 gig of ddr2 pc 4300 ram. to test me and a few clan mates uses these programs and visited known sites that try and infect or hyjack you we found spysweepers ability to prevent infection from the start to be the best. and its ability to remove pesky ones liek cool webs search ect and now even root kit detection second to non.

BEST spyware remover is webroot by far (i'v tried ad-aware, spy remover, spy sweeper etc, they don't even come close to what webroot can do). BTW Webroot also finds those little trojans that arrive from spyware, trojan's norton and mcaffee find but CAN'T clean or quarrantine