I am being attacked from all fronts!

[mchld50]

Somebody please help me. For the past two days I've been overrun with unstoppable pop-ups, ads, and banners.
I am a novice and am completely overwhelmed. I've been told that hackers have broken in to my system, for what purpose eludes me.
This is the first site that has provided me shelter from the storm!
Can someboby please help me fight back!

[endotoxin]

Chances are you haven't been hacked, but you've prolly caught some spywear. I'd recommend downloading and running Lavasoft's "Adaware" and "Spybot Search & Destroy".

http://spybot.eon.net.au/

and

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

[catch]

Yes, modern hackers are the internet's answer to those annoying perfume people in department stores, only here rather that spraying perfume in your face to make a sale, they slosh ads all over your screen.

catch

PS. Yes, I am kidding. Sounds like you inadvertantly installed some form of adware as stated by endotoxin. (comet curso and bonzi buddy (?) are common suspects)

[endotoxin]

Oh dear lord, may I never have to deal with that purple ape again!

See, once upon a time I worked as a phonemonkey for a well-known and powerful internet service provider *coughcoughEARTHLINKcough*. Now for some odd reason, we techs were not allowed to support anything that was not communications related, EXCEPT for BonsiBuddy.

The fix for removing BB from a Win32 or VWin32 system is several pages long, involving numerous registry hacks and DOS-based systemfile deletes.

And this was necessary, as BB would patch and insert itself into the lowest levels of the OS. Literally everything. Hell, I remember trying to launch edit.exe from a command window, and that little ape popped up asking if I wanted to download the latest version of Bloated_Ascii_editor_.exe.

God I hated that ape.

[nihil]

Hi,

Remember to update SpyBot and AdAware before you run them.

Also try http://www.swatit.org and get/update/run SwatIT 2.1 (this takes a while but digs pretty deep)

And http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html you want Hijack This.

It will show you what is running on your machine, but please be careful, it shows everything, not just scumware.

Also http://www.wilderssecurity .net

and get Spyware Guard and Spyware Blaster

Good Luck

[disc0rd]

That stupid ape was funny when you got it to say dirty things
And then 5 minutes later it was annoying as hell....Everybody looks like they got a piece of the puzzle covered...
A simple solution you might want to look at, is by going to your Control Panel>Add/Remove Apps/ and see if theres anything you don't recognize that may have been installed as spyware from other applications.
Another good application to stop popups on the net is the google toolbar, I find it handy every once in awhile....

Haha...bonzai buddy...*shakes head*

[amorphous]

Well everything seems to be covered except if you are running a window OS then it might also be the messenger service covering your screen with pop-up messages. To kill it go to
Start-Control Panel-Administrative Tools-Services then scroll down to messenger, right click on it the click properties. Under start-up type select disabled. That should take care of the problem if its messenger doing the dirty work.
Good Luck!

[SirDice]

Everybody else covered most of the stuff but since you are a complete newbie I will fill in the rest

In addition to the software stated above also get a good virusscanner and a personal firewall. And last but not least: Keep it all up to date. This also includes (but is not limited to) running Windows Update on a regular basis.

[PM8228]

Not to beat a dead horse, but after you install the AV and spyware killers, boot up in safe mode then update and scan.

[anjali]

i guess try deleting all temporary internet files, cookines... that way atleast u will see some change in the unwanted mails that u are receiving....

As suggested by friends here... look out if there is a new program that has been added to ur system...

After screening and clearing the system with presumed trojan / software... with either adware or spybot....

I would suggest that u also download Zonealarm (Free Version) and then try controlling the traffic..... (Zone alarm is very simple to use.. just be careful to what all connections are u granting the access)....

Regards