All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

Ever since updating to Spybot S&D 1.5 and immunizing my system, pages take a few seconds longer to load. I didn’t realize that it was due to Spybot S&D for at least a week. Brutal, huh?

Solution: Undo Spybot S&D immunization for Firefox. (Here’s the explanation that was too much for me to read.)

For now, SpywareBlaster will have to hold the fort down. I don’t browse questionable sites, so it’s not really a problem anyway.

There’s an article at ZDNet outlining 10 tips to keep spyware off your system. However, I like what was stated at Lifehacker in response to it:

To be honest, if you’re following every step you should feel pretty safe. That said, following every step is going to take up a lot of your system resources and will probably really slow down most older (and even some newer) PCs. Just remember to practice safe surfing whenever possible, and when you’ve downloaded a questionable bit of data, give it a scan before you fire it up.

If you only stick to a few sites, and don’t stray to questionable ones, you should be safe without too much extra software. Other than Firefox, I don’t have too much else running (in regards to antispyware apps) because of this. Actually, NoScript wasn’t mentioned, and I think it’s great!

I was sifting thru some unread email newsletters, and came across WinPatrol (via Steve Bass). Looks pretty cool, and I think should compliment the other major anti-spyware utilities (e.g. Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware SE Personal, MS AntiSpyware).

In the Spyware Specific forum at Majorgeeks, there’s a comprehensive post about how to clean spyware off your [Windows] computer. On Friday, I was [starting to] clean a friend’s system. However, I tried to run Spybot S&D, and when I tried to let it fix the problems that came up, it closed itself moments after clicking the button. What gives? The others ran fine, fortunately. He gave me his two Apple stickers that came with his new 20GB 4G iPod. Hmm…

I just installed Ad-Aware SE Personal 1.05 on my laptop, and it says 1.06 is out. Lavasoft, however, doesn’t seem to show the personal edition any longer. But, Majorgeeks and the Lavasoft download page (I guess) say otherwise. What gives?

I feel terrible for this (older) woman whose PC I’m working on. (more…)

Emco’s Hotbar Adware Removal Tool worked better than the Symantec tool. I just used both right now at work.

Do you know someone reckless with their web browsing habits, that won’t use Firefox or Opera? Tell them about SpywareBlaster 3.3 that just got updated today - after you finish cleaning out the current spyware on their PC.

I read the CNET News.com article “Worst spyware queues up” this morning. It’s good to see what names pop up, in case a friend or client needs help on their computer. The part that caught my eye really ticked me off:

Webroot recommends that people install Microsoft security patches, avoid using freeware and disable downloads via ActiveX in Internet Explorer.

Avoid using freeware? That’s the one thing that keeps us going! Basically all of the programs listed here is freeware! What about Firefox? OpenOffice? AVG Anti Virus Free Edition? 7-Zip? Filezilla?

Ridiculous. You simply do not have to fork out cash for everything. You can donate to keep the developers going, but they’re not looking for money…they’re just trying to help out everyone where others have failed.

Before you think of downloading that program from a site that claims to clean spyware and prevent popups better than anything else, you should check this huge resource on the topic:

Rogue/Suspect Anti-Spyware Products & Websites (Spyware Warrior)

In addition to a listing of the suspect anti-spyware products and sites, it also has clones and knock-offs, legitimate and licensed, and trustworthy anti-spyware. Eric Howes did a great job on this resource.

(Thanks to “The Blog That Should Not Be” for posting this at his blog today.)