Winning the battle



I have been planning to put away my winter shoes and bring out my sandals and flipflops and flats, clean out my bedside drawer and organize my receipts, return impulse purchases that don't look that awesome on second thought, put up a photo album, etc. etc. But no, I haven't done any of that. Thus, my shoe rack is ridiculously still filled with boots in the dead of summer.



What I have been doing is launching an all-out war against those stupid spyware thugs who keep installing annoying little programs on my computer that cause those freaking pop-ups! No more. These reckless, almost smug, pop-ups have got to stop. I would like to be able to check my mail and read blogs and whatnot in peace. I abhor IE windows appearing out of nowhere advertising online degrees. I want my one MSN window, damnit!



It has not been an easy path to spyware-freehood. In the process, more trojans, spybots, keyloggers, adware, and spyware have flooded my PC. I have had to reboot countless times. I had to hunt down executable files deeply embedded in folders within folders. I've had to resort to good old DOS to change attributes and delete "inaccessible" files. I've had to kill seemingly invincible processes that insist on recurring countless times. Thank God there are amazingly smart and thorough and incredibly bored people out there who seem to have dedicated their lives to clearing one's system of spyware.



My own technique is simple. I arrange my executable files by date created order and anything that's been created recently that is unfamiliar is suspect. Some spyware are bundled together with free software downloaded from the internet. If you have downloaded software that allows you to share MP3s illegally, the warning is somewhere in that long winding thing that you're supposed to read before you click Yes, I Accept. Payback is a bitch.



Watch out for cheesy names like AllCyberSearch, Bargain Buddy, Dealhealper, n-Case. Check your Prefetch file for any suspicious .exe files. Do not use uninstallers packaged with the spyware. They are evil. If you have DSL, disconnect.



Two days of relentless pursuit after, I am relatively spyware-free (at least I think so) and I am able to watch Maps eighty times in peace. Geek.