Sunday, August 19, 2007

Spyware , Adware, Spybot , Ad-Aware and More

Am trying to show off my knowledge on computer security here - Recent addition to my knowledge repository . When you spend all Sunday reading and working on straightening out the security bit , you are allowed that freedom to show off, even if thats not the intention. If you are reading this piece, you must do the following to save your Sunday for other things..

  • Install Spybot and Ad-Aware .


If you are using XP or Vista, ensure the firewall settings are resonably tight. Both are free to install legally. Inaddition to the regular anti-virus, these are must-haves. They help to identify any spyware, adware or malware in your computer.

My computer was accessed into and the hacker had left "Key logger" and "Adwares" in my laptop. All my key strokes were stored and sent to the hacker. Thankfully, my bank and credit card accounts are safe, though i have been using online banking quite often these days. Am no longer the administrator of my computer and don't have access to Control Panel, Registry Editor etc.

Was working long days for sometime now and was looking forward to this Sunday to take it easy. But, to waste a Sunday tending to the computer, killed me. I could've done fun things .. like a neat blog post, play cricket or read - things i really was looking forward to. Things happen , when you least expect them to - both the good and the bad .

And am going to spend all of tomorrow on formating the hard disk and reinstalling millions of applications. Great start to the week !!

(And all through this , i never lost my cool - Something i worked on , in the past few months! )

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lol!

Unknown said...

Macchi KK;
You have two choices now. Either you install Linux in which case, your life becomes absolutely painless, or install windows and create two logins, one with administrator privileges and one without, and use the account without administrator privileges to access the internet !

K.Shyam

Karthikeyan (KK) said...

You know who - I really "no" who this is!! Lol , it is , at the end of it all :)

Shyam - Elegant solution!! Already did the comp admin and user account ! Thanks for the suggestion!

Abhinav Vinayakh Shankar said...

bore adikudhu! post post post!
Enna pathi oru sports story? :)