Stop Scumware from clogging up your computer
I was visiting a friend a while ago, and happened to visit www.casinogeek.com using their computer. Much to my horror, I saw a pop-up for 888Casino when I left the site! I do not put any pop-ups, pop-unders or anything else of that nature on this site. I want visitors to have a pleasant experience while at Casino Geek's Casino Games, and not be bothered by unwanted pop-up ads.
I cleaned an amazing amount of scumware from her computer (Scumware gets itself installed on your system without your knowledge), and the pop-up problem was solved. She noticed that the computer ran a lot faster afterwards, too!
Garden Variety Scumware:
- Collectware - Spies on you - collecting information about your online habits.
- Dialer - dials a service, usually porn sites. If you've ever gotten a suprise in your phone bill, the problem may not be your phone company, it could be one of these babies. Everytime you use your computer, dialers automatically dial up and connect to a service, often one that charges for every minute you are connected (without your knowledge);
- Drive-By Downloads - Installs itself onto your computer as you surf!
- Hijacker - Program that changes some settings in your browser, such as (1) changing your default home page to their company page, (2) Redirecting your online searches to a certain pay per search site, and, (3) Transmits URLS viewed to their company server;
- Malware - Short for malicious software, software designed specifically to damage or disrupt a system;
- Trojan Horse - Often disguised as something benign, such as music, a game, an archive, Trojans range from mild to very serious threats.
Avoid Adware as much as you can. It chews up your computer's resources, clogs it and slows it down. If you are on a dial-up connection and pay per hour of use, it'll cost you money in terms of online time wasted while the ads load. Avoid adware. Not only does it use your computer's resources, some track your movements on the internet, hijack your browser and the more malicious ones change your system settings. If you can't afford to buy a spyware remover/monitor program, there are plenty of good quality utilities offered free on the internet.
The product which I personally use is Lavasofts Ad-Aware, provided for free from Lavasoft. Ad-Aware is designed to provide advanced protection from known Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components.
Because my business involves many hours of online time, I have purchased the professional version of Ad-Aware, but for a long time I used the free version, and it did an oustanding job for me. I highly recommend it.
Cookies are not harmful to your computer Every cookie on your computer will come up in spyware scans. Don't worry about these - they are not harmful to your computer. What they do, is they keep track of your visits to online sites, cush as Casinos, and allow your login to be entered automatically. I found this out myself the hard way a long time ago - I deleted all my cookies and was horrified to find that all my logins were also gone - and I hadn't written them all down. Long story short, it's a good idea to keep the cookies just because they make things so convenient.
