Whether you’re looking to protect a brand new PC, or remove any annoying virus that has managed to sneak on to your laptop, anti-virus software is essential. But buying anti-virus software can get expensive, especially after you start racking up the yearly subscription charges you’ll need to stay up to date. Fortunately, a handful of companies offer very effective free anti-virus solutions – many even outstrip competing commercial packages in detection rates and scan speed. Here are a few of our favorites.
Tag Archive: spyware
Microsoft Goes After Scareware
At one time or another, we’ve all experienced the pop-up saying we have a problem with our computer and offering a download as a solution, so-called “scareware.” And many of us have ignored them. But many haven’t, and found they’ve downloaded – at a cost – a Microsoft program, or even found themselves infected by spyware.
Microsoft isn’t happy at being associated with all this, and the company is doing something about it. Working with the Washington State Attorney General’s office, they’re filing suits against the biggest spammers involved. In fact, those offenders could be charged under the state’s Computer Spyware Act, accoding to Vnunet.
German Government Plans Spyware Use
In a very bizarre story, the German government has announced plans to send e-mails containing spyware to suspected terrorists, which will allow agents to search the hard drives of the suspects. The e-mail (which would evidently purport to come from various official bodies) will contain a Trojan that installs itself on the suspect’s computer. The German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, has stated that the spyware would be used only in a few cases and for a limited time as part of a new anti-terrorism bill. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she supports the measure. Unsurprisingly, there’s been plenty of criticism of the plans. Gisela Piltz, of the Free Democrats, called it a totally unacceptable intrusion into privacy. Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, of the Social Democrats (SPD), has voiced concern about the spyware plans, saying they might infringe privacy laws. Meanwhile, you have to wonder exactly why the government announced this will happen, since it give forewarning to all those terrorist suspects.
Spyware Vendor to Pay $1 Mln in Settlement
Computer software maker Secure Computer of White Plains, New York, which was accused of marketing its Spyware Cleaner product via deceptive spam and pop-up scans, has agreed to settle with the Washington State attorney general for $750,000 in legal fees, $2000 in damages, and $75,000 in reimbursements to Washington State customers who purchased Spyware Cleaner.
The company was accused of violating Washington State’s 2005 Computer Spyware Act by marketing its product via deceptive spam and pop-up advertisements. The ads would offer to perform free spyware scans on a user’s computer, but would always report a problem with the scanned computer and offer Spyware Cleaner as a solution.
Spyware Declined During 2005?
A study conducted at the University of Washington, “A Crawler-based Study of Spyware on the Web” (PDF) crawled more than 18 million Web pages across eight broad categories looking for spyware, once in May 2005 and again in October 2005. In May, it found that 13.4 percent of the 21,200 executable files it found bore spyware, and 3.4 percent of the domains it accessed contained “drive-by download” attacks which exploited known security flaws in attempts to install spyware and malware. However, by October 2005, the frequency of sites carrying “drive-by download” attacks had dropped to 1.6 percent of the domains surveyed.
House Bill Punishes Spyware Makers
“The House voted Monday to establish new penalties for purveyors of Internet “spyware” that disables users’ computers and secretly monitors their activities.
By overwhelming majorities, the House passed two bills that stiffen jail sentences and establish multimillion-dollar fines for those who use secret surveillance programs to steal credit-card numbers, sell software or commit other crimes.
The bills prohibit a number of practices often associated with spyware, such as reprogramming the start page on a user’s Web browser, logging keystrokes to capture passwords and other sensitive data, or launching pop-up ads that can’t be closed without shutting down the computer. ”
Tech Terms Confuse Users
“Confusing “geek speak” used by experts and media included “phishing”, “rogue dialler”, “Trojan” and “spyware”.
Eighty-four percent did not know that phishing describes faked e-mail scams.
The most common phishing scam is one used to con people into handing over bank account details online.
A quarter said they knew what “spyware” was, although almost one in 10 of those thought it was a computer program that kept an eye on unfaithful partners. ”
Read more at BBC News
Found VIA HardOCP
CWShredder Software Gets Final Release
“CoolWebSearch is the name of a variety of different browser hijackers, all of which redirect users to coolwebsearch.com and other sites affiliated with its operators.
Merijn, a graduate student at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, single-handedly wrote and supported CWShredder in his spare time. He has updated the program to remove each new variety of CWS but states in a farewell note, “I simply do not have the tools to remove the latest variants, they are too aggressive or complicated to allow automated removal by CWShredder.”"
Report: Incidence Of Spyware Still Rising
From the press release:
This week EarthLink and Webroot Software released their third SpyAudit Report, which has tracked the growth of spyware on consumer PCs for the first half of 2004.
Since the SpyAudit report’s inception on January 1, 2004, more than two million scans have been performed. The scans discovered approximately 54.8 million instances of spyware, for an average of 26.5 traces per SpyAudit scan. Scans nearly doubled from the first to the second quarter. For each category, the instances of adware increased month-over-month, while adware cookies, system monitors and Trojans decreased slightly overall. The complete report is available at http://www.earthlink.net/spyaudit/press.
