Adware, Malware, Spyware, Oh My! Do these guys actually have a life?

[Mortanis 0]

Okay, I just got through getting rid of some "MovieLand" thing that installed itself onto my computer. Geez, these things bug me! According to it, because I "installed" it, I now have to pay a $90 fee to make the popups go away! I was just about ready to sue! I finally downloaded the Yahoo toolbar to get rid of it, though...But my main point here is, why do these adware people do this? Are they just genuinely slime? I mean, their entire job would be making other people's life miserable, so that they can advertise for some company! Now the last thing I want to do is go out and buy winfixer, or anything else I heard about through adware!

[danuk1 0]

Its so they can find out what your looking at and then try to sell you related items. i hate adware, spyware and virus's so much lost count how many times i've had to reboot the computer now due to an infected system.

[BordaForx 0]

Winfixer is spyware.

[dark_drgn 0]

Use adaware to remove your spyware, adware, and others, its free and one-click scanning. Its by lavasoft, other then periodically updating the definitions file, you don?t have to do anything. You can get the download here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. Their original website is at http://www.lavasoft.com/.

[Cool_Freaker 0]

Spybot: Search and Destroy is a good ad remover as well. I guess spyware generally targets those less tech saavy who click on links like "Your computer is unprotected - click here" or whatever. Spyware tends to just send back information on what you're looking at so they can target consumers *better*... I guess the people who code malware/spyware/adware have little choice, or enjoy the challenge of attempting to invade peoples computers. Alternatively, they could just be aggressive marketers, or the creators of whatever they're trying to promote, and get direct gain from the further growth of their product.

[selim 0]

I use Avast to stop things like viruses, spyware and adware from being installed on my PC. It's just a virus scanner but it seems to be the best one I've used so far and it's free. It might help prevent any of that rubbish from installing on your system and Spybot SD is good for getting rid of them.

[CinnamorollTK 0]

The people who make spyware make money from selling your information to the companies that offer good money for your info. Adware companies put popups and such on your computer to make money. For example, lets say you get two dollars for every 1,000 popups on computers with your affiliate name. If your "software" makes one popup appear per minute, thats 60 popups an hour or 12 cents an hour. Imagine infecting 10,000 computers that are on 10 hours a day. Thats $1.20 per computer per day or $12,000 total per day. Its a lot of money.As for malware, I think its "software" made by computer geniuses that are mad at the world and want to get back at them the one way they know how to.(Be warned, this is how I heard that it works. I could be wrong.)

[ongnoai 0]

Okay, I just got through getting rid of some "MovieLand" thing that installed itself onto my computer. Geez, these things bug me! According to it, because I "installed" it, I now have to pay a $90 fee to make the popups go away! I was just about ready to sue! I finally downloaded the Yahoo toolbar to get rid of it, though...

 

But my main point here is, why do these adware people do this? Are they just genuinely slime? I mean, their entire job would be making other people's life miserable, so that they can advertise for some company! Now the last thing I want to do is go out and buy winfixer, or anything else I heard about through adware!

 

Hey Mortanis,

 

I can only come in strong support to what was said by Nova Terra. YOU DON'T WANT TO GET WINFIXER. Period. That stuff stinks.

 

Otherwise, I think you've got the whole panel of sensible advices between this post and yours.

 

Cheers all!

[Find3r 0]

i hate them too!! if you download something by p2p you always get some spyware, trojan... i use webroot spy sweeper, he solves my problem.try it out. ad-aware is good too.

[brandice 0]

oh, how I hate this stuff as well! A couple of days ago we started getting pop up tabs within the firefox browser. Everyone has always said how safe firefox was and how nothing like this could ever happen but the ad people have finally figured it out. :| It's constant, the worst thing that's ever been on any of my computers. And I can't find any sites where anyone has acknowledged that this is possible.

[wariorpk 0]

I think that these people do not have lives and they are lazy as well. They can not get a job so they put all this junk on you computer so that they do not have to work by stealing information and spreading ads. I do not see why people feel that they have the right to do this. One day all these people will get found out and when they do I am going to laugh.