who can i trust??

firstly hello all

im a new member and have been lookin through these forums for the last few days or so..the reason being i got secruity concious after a bloke who i work with was infected by a virus via the internet (thats how he said he got it)...so i got security minded

so firstly i thought its about time i updated my antivirus software (was 6 months outadate)then when i ran the updated antivirus it found i had a pwsteal programme which ive now sorted...my main problem is i got this virus/trojan (being a newbie im still learnin so excuse my inaccuracys) from a so called security website to be honest can remember name or address but my point is how do i know who to trust????? i seen lots of threads in antionline which i was interested in i.e download "the cleaner" from www.whatever.com but how do i know its ok (cos only a fool gets burnt by the same fire twice)

also i dont mean any disrespect to antonline and have found this site both helpfull and the members seem friendly

hpoe for a good responce

waterboy

Trial and error, man, trial and error... j/k
You could always ask for advice here... with over 100k members, I'm pretty sure we know the good ones from the bogus ones... And common sense is a good starting point.

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Originally posted here by waterboy

how do i know who to trust?????

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I think everyone in alt.hackers.malicious is trustworthy.....j/k

From the name of the program, you might consider changing all your passwords. Then, on the other hand maybe it was just a spoof, probably not, but maybe. Checking out www.lavasoft.de for their AdAware program will be helpful also. Good luck. :)

cheers chaps

im in the process of changing passwords etc luckily enough ive only got win xp and counterstrike on my pc ...so theve only got my email passwords so its easily sorted

cheers again

now time to do some research on firewalls

waterboy

You can always trust me ;)

but seriously, as negative said, there are many people on here who probably know authentic ones and bogus ones. and on a further note, never trust microsoft :P

Who can you trust do you mean from where to download programs ?

Try and always download program's from the product vendors website AND alway's scan you're downloads with an up-to-date virri scanner even if you download them from the vendors website (you never know if it has been compromised and corrupt downloads have been put up).Try to avoid p2p file sharing programs these are rampant with virri from trojans to worms if you are using a p2p network just scan every file you download avoid files with double file extensions
and always keep your virri scaner updated that is the most important thing dont panic if your virri scanner picks up a virus and it wont remove it just check the symatec website for removal instructions

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Originally posted here by The Old Man
From the name of the program, you might consider changing all your passwords. Then, on the other hand maybe it was just a spoof, probably not, but maybe. Checking out www.lavasoft.de for their AdAware program will be helpful also. Good luck. :)

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I have Adaware,but curiosty caused me to DL another Spyware/Trojan seeking program,mainly to check one agianst the other.....

I found running Spybot Search and Destroy,after Adaware,found many things Adaware overlooked,and to me is easier to use......

http://beam.to/spybotsd


Good luck!! :)

Trust no one

and I'd have to agree with Bohogg, spybot is a more thorough cleaner, but it deletd my loginname for my DSL too and I was lucky I had a copy of that ;) so it might just be "too clean" for some :D

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it deletd my loginname for my DSL

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Ouch!!!.......I probably should say to waterboy that Spybot list results of what is found.You can scroll through the list,hi-lite an item for a description,and if need be uncheck the box before deletion.......Sorry for not mentioning it before..... :(

thanks all

your help is gratefully accepted

waterboy

i agree with the guys but i have to add something.

I NEVER TRUST A SINGLE PROGRAM TO DO SOME WORK,I TRY TWO OR MORE FOR THE SAME PURPOSE AND THEN TRY TO COME TO A CONCLUSION!!!

that's it :)

The cleaner from Moosoft is legit, and will remove trojans, etc.
That one you can trust. If you dont, research it for yourself --> www.moosoft.com

What i do when downloading programs (most of the time) is i download it to a computer that i can afort to reset, or another hard drive in my computer (its the one where you switch them out). And then if i find it is doing what it is supposed to do and i like it, i put it on my main computer/hard drive.

if you are really paranoid just run a virus scanner over all programs you download/recieve, however i find you can trust the major well known companies except maybe M$?!?

get a freebie firewall, tiny and zonealarm are pretty good, turn off alerts because a lot of new users confuse internet trafic with attacks, have an up to date virus scanner (I use AVG) and trojan scanner (cleaner). That's just some good sense.

We talk about who's programs we can trust. Well, why, do we have to to "trust" that they don't have any backdoors built in, or unwanted ad annoyances, or 'spam'? Is there not a way to find out for ourselves what the program is designed to do, short of learning the programming language entirely.?

I have a vauge idea of how this could be accomlished. Uncompiling the program, then searching for key functions or strings...would there be an encryption problem trying to uncompile? Not really sure.... But i know it could be accomplished... Just wondering if there is a shortcut...
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zepherin i have something to say about the antivirus you have chosen.even if avg is free it has a very weak search engine.and i will tell you why i'm saying this.i used to work in an internet cafe.as an administrator i had to protect all the machines from getting infected.but we didn't have the money to spend for buying norton,mcafee or anotheer commercial antivirus software.so i decided to trust avg which is free.so i installed it and i thought i was safe.i was daily updating the virus definitions and thougth that they were safe(the pc's).one day i installed back orrifice on the server by mistake.then i tried to scan the server in order to see what avg would do.as you can imagine it found tha trojan in my machine in c:\windows\.......
i tried to clean it up.then i rescanned the machine and it was supposed to be clean.the scan results were saying that "no virus found".
but then i thought: "what about trying to access the file that was supposed to be infected before?".
i did it and you can imagine what happened. i came up with a message saying that the spacified folder was infected.
i rescanned the machine and i came up with a warning:"virus infection".

ps:i did the same experiment on othr machines and had the same results.
i finally used a copy of my antivirus software in order to disinfect the machines!!!!!!

:) :) :)