Monday, May 09, 2005

Spyware infestation 

I'm having a problem with spyware on my home computer which has worsened over the past week. Last night, it became invasive to the point of worrying me. New windows were popping up with great frequency and new icons were getting added to the desktop and quick-access bar. Many of the pop-ups were "warnings" that my computer was infected with spyware, but the close window x was disabled on them, and right-clicking on their tabs at the bottom of the screen did not offer an option to close the window, either. Since my only options were to click "yes" or "no" on the pop-up, I am led to dobut the validity of such "warnings."

I run anti-spyware software from Ad-aware and Spybot every week, but there's still stuff on my computer. What worries me is that previously when I've run these programs, there is usually a new update every week or so. However, over the past month at least, each have returned a message saying that no new updates are available. This seems fishy.

I think that the spyware folks may have found a way around the anti-spyware software. My guess is that there's something on my computer that's telling the Ad-aware and Spybot programs that there are no new updates available, when there really are. Either that, or there is something telling them to exclude certain files from their searches.

Has anyone heard of such things happening? Is there a solution?