Spyware (Are you infected?!)

Hi all. I have a cable modem, and I play Unreal Tournament online quite a bit. Recently, I began to have problems with my copy of Unreal, where I kept getting these GPF's for no reason at all. This went from happening never to happening every single time I played! It would happen usually after being online only about 5 minutes or so. Anyway, after searching up and down on a bunch of different forums, I finally found a solution, however unlikely it seemed at the time. A person in the forum said that their GPF's went away when they installed AdAware, and removed the spyware from their systems. So I did this, and I haven't had a GPF since. It is also signifigant to note that over thirty other people posted back to that forum thanking that person for this tip because it solved their GPF problems as well.

So my question is: Are you sure there aren't any spyware programs on your machine?? Personally, I considered myself a very careful person. I never use any shareware downloaded from the internet. I use only products that I purchase, and only download updates for programs I have already. I don't use Gator, Aureate, GoZilla, (all well-known spyware carriers) or anything like that, but after running AdAware, I found that I had 24 entries in my registry that were put there by spyware programs (mostly by Aureate, the most notorius of the spyware crew). I also had one folder on my computer that AdAware wanted to delete. The folder was placed there by Eudora, and it contains the ads that they use for people that use the demo version of their Email client. I have a paid version, so there was nothing in this directory, but AdAware found it wanted to delete it, correctly identifying it a "suspicious folder" LOL

I honestly didn't think that AdAware would find anything on my computer, and I especially didn't think that it would find 23!!! references to spyware. Here's the link: http://voiceofthepublic.org/Lavasoft/index.htm

Grab yourself a copy of this and post back here. I would like to know if anyone else has been infected by these "trojan programs".

Thanks for the info, I scanned my machine and had 17 different things, including gator and comet cursor which I uninstalled long ago, Im going to have to use this on clients machines at work if for anything just general maintence.

For additional Spyware experiences and Ad-Aware testimonials check out this thread from Tech Tips.

I too am on a cable modem, so I checked out the link, downlaoded the program and ran it. It found 41 components!!! I was shocked. I knew there had to be some, but 41!! Good tool. I also found a lot of Aureate, and 1 gator. Thanks!!!

I only found 2 entries.

Scan initialized on 7/21/01 9:23:42 PM.
(AAW build 5.5, referencefile 087-24.06.2001)
==============================================


Started registry scan
======================
SaveNow key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\whenu\
SaveNow key:HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\wusn.1\


Started extended registry scan
===============================


Registry scan result:
Suspicious keys found :2

Scanning finished
==================
Suspicious modules found:0
Suspicious keys found :2
Suspicious folders found:0
Suspicious files found:0
=========================
Spyware components ignored:0
Total spyware components found:2

Have no idea what programs they came from though...

I use both ZoneAlarm Pro and CommView, so nothing comes in or goes out without my knowledge.

I use ZoneAlarm, but my understanding is that it's just not good enough alone. A lot of the ads and spy-ware garbage comes in piggy-backing through IE, which is given priviledges by ZoneAlarm. I would be interested in people's opinions of freeware spy-ware protection/prevention.

I knew going in that my work PC was "infected", but...

File scan result:
Suspicious files found:43

Scanning finished
==================
Suspicious modules found:0
Suspicious keys found :19
Suspicious folders found:2
Suspicious files found:43
==========================
Spyware components ignored:0
Total spyware components found:64

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Good topic ... I found this program about a month ago through GRC.COM which by the way is the best site for testing those wonderful firewalls that don't work. I usually scan once a week because I am a heavy surfer and usually I find between 1 and 4 new references and this is without downloading files.

GRC.COM is an awesome security site. I have gained alot of awareness about security issues from reading the various contents of this site. If you are in any way concerned about security and privacy online, this is one site you need to put in your favorites!

I seem to have a problem with the prog. I did the scan and it found 19 instances. But it didn't give me the option of cleaning or anything. Is it something I've done in setup, or don't those items need removal. Appreciate any comments.
BTW, after it tells me the results, I get straight back to the main screen.

First, make sure to click on all the boxes on the left side. Then click Scan Now. After it's finished, click Continue, then check all the boxes in the main area (the components that it found that were spyware.) Now click on Continue once more, and it will tell you that the selected components were removed. That is all there is to it.