Byte by Bite

Spyware, hijackers and hot spots, oh my

by Marv Dealy

Published March 19, 2004

You 24 regular readers will remember that I’ve pounded the virus bully pulpit on numerous occasions, begging you to keep your computers safe from attacks by viruses, worms, Trojans, and other bad stuff.

To be properly protected, you’ll recall, means either (1) use a Mac and don’t worry about anything, or (2) keep your Windows updates and your virus definitions up-to-date at least weekly.

Making life more interesting are other bad things out there on the Internet, such as advertising spyware, both stealth and non-stealth freeware and shareware, homepage hijackers and redirectors.

At the risk of giving you heartburn, let’s take a closer look at some of this crud.

Spyware
Advertising spyware, both stealthy and non-stealthy, is used to gather information about your Internet surfing habits. This information is sent along to a website that gathers the information for a number of different uses by marketing types.

The spyware often installs without your knowledge when you install a shareware or freeware program. We’ve all clicked on the “I accept” button in the license agreement that comes with every program. I’ll wager most of us haven’t read the agreement itself. In the case of spyware, the agreement may well tell you exactly what it’s going to do.

Spyware can be smart enough to deliver targeted ads, which the merchants using this approach say makes it ok. Rather than spamming all Internet users, they argue, they are just going after those folks who are interested in their or similar products.

In any event, once your computer has been afflicted with spyware it can be removed, although sometimes not without a great deal of effort.

I use a free program from LavaSoft called Ad-Aware to root out and delete ad spyware. You can download your free copy at SnapFiles (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/adaware.html) or go to Download.com and search for Ad-Aware. Make sure you use the hyphen in the name. After you install the program, make sure you update the program before running, as there are nearly weekly updates that are posted to keep the program current.

Hijackers and redirectors
Homepage hijackers and redirectors are beginning to be more and more of a problem. A homepage hijacker resets your browser so that it forces you to visit a certain page whenever you start your browser, rather than a page you have chosen such as Google or Yahoo.

These are very nasty Trojan worms that, once they’re on your system, will constantly reset your home page, will send you off to a webpage of their creator’s choosing rather than what you’ve typed or clicked on, and are nearly impossible to remove.

That’s right folks – once you’re infected I’ve found it extremely difficult to remove these buggers. Often, I have spent hours researching different removal approaches on the Internet, most of which include editing the Windows Registry, and I’ve seen several that won’t be removed no matter what I do. One recent one is HuntBar.btiein, which appears to reinstall faster than I can uninstall it. Another real problem was the Trojan.Norio which changes your browser settings to direct you to pornographic web sites. Yet another was the XXX-Toolbar, a browser helper object.

In some instances, the only way to completely free a computer of these problems is to format the hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch.

Ouch. The moral here is make backups of what you don’t want to lose, and keep your computer protected. Or get a Mac.

Hot spots
Jonesing for some Internet with your wireless computer? You can use Google to find the nearest “hot spot” to your location. Get on over to a “hidden” page at Google (http://labs.google.com/location), where you’ll find two search windows. Put the phrase “Wi-Fi” (Wireless Fidelity) in the first window and the ZIP for the location you’re interested in. I used 95305 – Big Oak Flat’s ZIP – and found three hot spots in Sonora and two in Jamestown.

While hot spots are typically found in an airport, a coffee shop or a hotel, ours are at Sierra Nevada Adventure, Mother Lode Internet, and three listed that just give street addresses – apparently these hot spots aren’t necessarily for public consumption.

Of course, none of these are close enough for a wireless connection from Big Oak Flat – you’d typically need to be within 100 meters or so of the hot spot antennae for your computer to get a good signal.

Thanks to cousin Bob, who sent along the above. For further hot spot searches, you can try Intel’s hot spot finder (http://intel.jiwire.com/). Interestingly, this site only showed one hot spot – at Starbuck’s in Sonora. Intel’s site also notes that it costs $9.99 to hook up for a day at the coffee shop. For that price, you can nearly afford one of their Grande something or others.

Marv Dealy is a lifelong computer enthusiast and businessman in Tuolumne County. Reach him by e-mail at marv.dealy@throck.com