The newspaper had some terms for forms of sneaky internet-marketing – or worse. The first two items are paraphrased quotes, the last is my understanding.

"Amazon.com Inc. filed federal lawsuits seeking to restrain 11 online marketers from sending e-mails falsely labeled as coming from Amazon. Online marketing ploys that falsely identify the sender – known as 'spoofing' – have grown rapidly. The 11 marketers allegedly were trying to sell products including 'penile pills,' [etc.]"

"Spoofing differs from another more serious false identity scam known as 'phishing.' While both involve sending consumers' e-mails that appear to come from major corporations, in phishing, thieves then direct consumers to bogus Web sites that look like the companies' real sites, and ask you to verify or update bank account or credit-card information, which the thieves can then use."

spyware – software that surreptitiously tracks your internet activity for the spyware host. Typically attaches to your computer when you sign up for certain free sites, toolbars, etc. (In this it is an evil version of cookies, which a site attaches when you register so that this same site, which you've chosen, will recognize you when you next visit it.)
Feeds the host data on all your internet activity. The host can track your computer-purchases and sell the data to marketers: thus, if you later log onto the Hertz rent-a-car site, the spyware will create pop-ups directing you to Hertz's competitors (the spyware-host's clients). Obviously Hertz and its ilk object (contrast pop-ups generated to you by Hertz itself). Or some spyware will track – spy on – your keystrokes as you enter credit-card data.

Don't talk to me about spyware.

Three times recently my computer has been infected with the bloody stuff. You can get it without even realising by just accessing some web sites. Nothing except a momentary increase in disc activity will show that it's happened.
Not only that but my whole web site has had to be rebuilt today because somehow one of these - and I use the term intentionally - bastards has managed to infect my home page so that people accessing my site have run the risk of becoming infected themselves.

This has in total cost me something like fifty hours work in the last six months to fix.

This in spite of my running anti-virus software and a firewall.
My advice to everyone is

1. find lavasoft's site and download the free version of adaware which will at least allow you to find out if any of the more common spyware products are on your PC - it might even help you get rid of them. I ran this on a friends PC to find over fifty pieces of spyware on her machine.

2. Use the most aggressive settings you can on your firewall.

3. Go to the options in your browser and set all ActiveX controls to either "disable" or "always prompt". The most common way this stuff gets loaded is on "drive-by" downloads where a page will run an active X routine when you access it without you knowing a thing about it.

4. Don't even consider using RealPlayer or any other RealSomething software because most of the time downloading this will also download Xupiter which is one of these nasty little beasties.

5. Lobby your MP/senator for the death penalty for the cretins who write this stuff.

As you can see after two days solid of trying to fix the problems caused by the latest one (an infection of something called AdBreak) I'm feeling in a pretty pissed off mood.

One last thing. If your internet browser has ever started up with what looks like a search engine page but which you didn't intentinally make your home page then you almost certainly have spyware on your machine. Typically they say things like "Find the site you need" or "Web Site Finder" or "All the sites you want" as a heading. If this has ever happened to you then you need to check your machine asap even if you have subsequently reset your home page as it's a near certainty that someone is stealing information from your computer.
If this hasn't happened to you yet but does in the future DON'T USE THE "search engine" that has appeared. It will at best direct you to gambling or sex sites and at worst start stealing info from your machine when you use it. Some of the worst ones also reset your dial up numbers to premium rates lines terminating in places like Mauritious which will cost you huge amounts in phone bills.



Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

[This message was edited by BobHale on Thu Aug 28th, 2003 at 16:29.]

[This message was edited by BobHale on Thu Aug 28th, 2003 at 16:34.]

I'd like to second everything that Bob has said. The pests who write this stuff are a pain in the proverbial.

These days it really is pretty well imperative that you act in self-defence by installing software to fight these nuisances. Below I give links to three sites where you can download what is really the minimum. If you haven't got these programs, or something similar, I suggest you download them straight away. They may not necessarily be the best, but each offers a free version for download.

AVG Anti-Virus
ZoneAlarm firewalls
Lavasoft Ad-aware

Some other tips:

I have my email client set to read only text messages. HTML messages can contain malicious code, and usually the only people who will send that sort of message anyway are spammers.

Windows by default hides the file extension for known file types. You are less likely to accidentally open a file containing a virus if you see the full file name: most use .exe, .com, .scr, .bat, .pif and .vb*. You can change Windows' behaviour by opening Windows Explorer and clicking on View > Options. In the View tab, uncheck the box next to "Hide file extensions for known file types" and click OK.

Never reply to spam. Often the address is spoofed anyway, but even if it is not, all you have done is confirmed that your email address actually exists, which makes it even more valuable to those who prepare lists of addresses for sale. Similarly, those who want you to go to a Web site to unsubscribe from their list should be ignored in most instances..

I completely reformatted my hard disc only a month ago and everything that has arrived from the Internet has thus come in within the last 30 days.

I downloaded the Ad-Aware free software that Bob recommended and it found FIFTY-TWO cookies that were some form of spyware.

No doubt this is one reason why I get so much US originating Spam - the spyware has identified me as one who looks at US sites! I use the Internet all the time for research and, more often than not, I will visit maybe half a dozen sites before I find the one I want. Many of them also have popups which you need to click on to close and that activity is presumably also likely to be recorded.

I did, incidentally, decide not to reinstall my popup stopper since I suspected it might have caused the virtual memory problems that I was having with Word and PowerPoint and which forced me to re-format my drive.

Richard English

I'd overlooked pop-up stoppers. I use Opera (from http://www.opera.com/) which has the option to ignore pop-ups built-in. It's just a matter of changing the preferences. Mozilla/Firebird (http://www.mozilla.org/) also has a similar option.

If you have to use MS Internet Explorer, the Google toolbar is a good choice (Windows only). With the toolbar you can also search the Web with Google from any site, fill in forms with one click, restrict your search to pages located in a specific country, search just within the pages of a site, and highlight search terms on a page. It's a relatively small download and integrates seamlessly with IE.

Help!!! I downloaded Ad-aware 6.0, ran a scan, and it came up with 229 items. 200 of them say "tracking cookie" under the "Vendor" column, and "file" under the "Type" column. Is it safe to get rid of those? None of the other 29 are "tracking cookies", 23 of them say "RegKey" under "Type", 2 say "file" and 1 says "folder". I'm assuming, for now, that I need to keep those. I want to get rid of all I don't need, but I don't want to get rid of something that will cripple my system. How can I tell what's safe to get rid of? As you can tell, I'm not very computer-savvy. I appreciate all the help you can give me. Thanks.

Tinman

Tinman,

Get rid of them all. The tracking cookies will not affect your system in the slightest; in fact it may even speed things up slightly. The others sound like adware components. Even if their removal were to affect anything, all that would stop would be whatever program installed them in the first place. You would probably be better off not using a program that installs such components anyway. Ad-aware is a well-behaved program, and won't remove anything vital.

quote:

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Originally posted by arnie:
Tinman,

Get rid of them all.

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They're gone. Thanks, arnie.

Tinman