Reporting these Adware programs..

[Jason1977]

do you guys report to the hosting company? or complain to your ISP?
do they do anything?
Our VP is coming down on me about these pop-ups as they are becoming a real issue here. I spent 2 hours cleaning someones machine last night.

I was thinking i could block the domains from the firewall, and have our ISP block them as well as the hosting company look into the issues.
what do you think?

[NemorY]

pop-ups or spyware ? get a pop-up stopper (googles tolbar did a nice job)....if you mean the windows messenger pop-ups ..disable the service...

Windows XP Home
Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
Click Performance and Maintenance
Click Administrative Tools
Double click Services Scroll
down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK


Windows XP Professional
Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
Click Administrative Tools
Click Services
Double click Services Scroll
down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK

http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/docs/messagepopup/

if you mean spy/adware then

SpywareBlaster doesn't scan and clean for spyware - it prevents it from ever being installed.

http://www.download2me.net/boards/vi...d.php?tid=1285

[groovicus]

do you guys report to the hosting company? or complain to your ISP?

You can try, but your ISP and hosting company is not exactly responsible for your users' activities...nor are they responsible for ensuring that the systems affected had sufficient security in the first place.

As was pointed out, Spywareblaster is a nice program for 'immunizing' systems against infection, and they do a pretty good job of keeping updated.

Regprot ( http://www.diamondcs.com.au/index.php?page=regprot ) is another nice free program that will let you know if something is being written to the registry that isn't supposed to be, such as the newest variant of Cool Web Search that is going around.

Ie Spyad ( http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...d,23332,00.asp ) adds something like 4000 sites IE's restricted list.

If you VP is griping about pop-ups, tell him that's just the tip of the iceberg. Check out this thread concerning the newest CWS infection ( http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=7447 ) If you get one of these, you are going to spend a whole bunch longer trying to get rid of it. And there still is no definative fix...

Time to tighten up the company's Acceptable Use Policy. Best of luck.

[AngelicKnight]

Good question to bring up. Sadly, most spyware/adware is perfectly legal (go fig), so reporting likely won't do much good.

[Jason1977]

is it really legal? so reporting to the hosting company does know good?
do you have any evidence of this?
I am not talking about your typical pop-up from a site or 2 i am talking about software that gets installed on yoru machine that tosses pop-ups galore.
I work for a bank and they do not allow us to use "freeware" something to do with the FDIC standards. if it resides on a server or machine that customer info is on.
We have to have support and the software has to be approved by FDIC.
How about blocking this stuff on my firewall? is that even a realistic idea?I cant do pop-up blockers because we use a software that is essential to business that needs its own pop-up to run

[NemorY]

Although this type of spyware is usually just a bad cookie that keeps track of your info incase you return to that site, much worse infections mainly come from shareware and freeware version of some of the most popular titles on today's market. The bad news is there are no laws against this type of advertising as of yet.

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2...prweb88692.htm

[DjM]

Originally posted here by Jason1977
How about blocking this stuff on my firewall? is that even a realistic idea?

I think your asking for trouble here. (administrative nightmare) You can't really just block the pop-up as they will come through port 80, blocking it will effect your internet connections. Placing an IP block on your firewall is where the administrative nightmare comes in. Blocking via IP would likely have you adding new IP's on a daily bases. You can try and manage it by using a "hosts" file on each machine but this to will not be totally effective.

You can find some information on 'hosts files' at the following sites.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/adblock.shtml

Good luck.

[groovicus]

The only way those pop-ups can get installed on your systems is by going to sites that contain it....and you can bet a dollar to a dime that somewhere in the fine print/disclaimers it says something like "by viewing this page you agree to have our special advertising software installed on your system"..so in that respect, it is legal.

Your particular situation puts a different spin on things..can you tell me what browser you are using? Can I assume, that since it needs to meed FDIC standards, it is IE? Which in that case, your options are limited, but there still are some things you can do, such as disabling any type of scripting, whether it be java or activeX...

This type of software doesn't just appear out of thin air...someone is going to sites they probably shouldn't be. The question that comes to mind to me (and please don't take this as a comment on your abilities) if adware can get installed that easy on computers that have customer info..how hard would it be to put something on there that can retrieve that customer info?? I would have to believe there is a huge liability issue there.

As far as security of the type you need, I will have to defer to the people here that actually do this for a living.

EDIT: Also, if it is pop-ups coming from your own system, pop-up blockers are going to be ineffective, I think.

Another thought, it has been a while since I used the Google toolbar, but isn't there an option to allow pop-ups from certain sites?

[NemorY]

but isn't there an option to allow pop-ups from certain sites?

Yes there is, you just click the number how mabny pages were blocked, and it will alow pop-ups on that site from then on.

[Jason1977]

We tried to set it to allow for this software and it doesnt work...not sure why...
as for the browser. its IE we have to use it.
I wish I could lock down people access more but i am not allowed to do that.
and of course I cant not allow scripting and java, active x cause these people need it to do their jobs.