Something to think about

[channelmaniac]

Hey folks,

I'm sitting through day 3 of a series of product trainings and our anti-spam/anti-malware guys are speaking and I was blown away by something and I wanted to share it. It's something to think about when you are deleting that garbage from your inbox...

There were an estimated 53.8 TRILLION, yes TRILLION spam messages sent in 2008.

Think about that for a minute...

Somewhere there has to be at least ONE person, and probably a lot more than one, that either buys the garbage hawked in those emails or gives them enough personal information to make it profitable for them to send it.

Additionally, some of it is malware related and they are stealing enough personal information that way to make it worthwhile. Malware? Yes. If you haven't patched your web browser, browser plug in software (Adobe Acrobat, Shockwave, and Flash players), or computer OS then you are vulnerable to infection by malicious web pages. Yes, even if you have anti-virus software. Anti-virus is always a catch-up to the bad guys kind of software.

When was the last time you scanned your PC for malware garbage? When was the last time you patched your PC? If you say "I never have" or "a long time ago" then you should patch it and scan it!

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com - Use it if you don't have Windows configured for auto patching.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com is one of many sites that does FREE web based virus scans of your Windows based PC.

http://free.grisoft.com is where you can get the FREE AVG anti-virus software.

http://www.lavasoft.de is where you can get Ad-Aware - a software package that is free and does anti-malware and spyware scans/removal.

Also remember this: If a spammer gets on the forum and manages to post before the moderator team can whack them, DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS THEY POST!

If you have some good anti-virus or anti-spyware/malware tool links then post 'em up! Through protection software, good patching procedures, and education everyone on the forum can keep their systems as safe as possible.

RJ

PS: If you can't get to those websites then your machine may already be infected. Many pieces of malware block access to cleanup sites and even disable cleanup software on your PC. DOH!

[StatFreak]

Another great program to get is malwarebytes. You can download the scan on demand version for free or buy the realtime protection software for $25. I use the free version -- just remember to get regular updates and to scan your computer frequently.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

I would suggest doing a full scan the first time out and then switching to the quick scan after you've verified that your computer is free of malicious software. I use this along with AdAware from lavasoft and Spybot S&D.

Spybot can be downloaded from their website at:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

[jay]

David,

This is an excellent recommendaion.

This is the only one that was able to clean that Anti-Virus 2009.
We purposely infected a machine and it disables AVG, Norton, Mcafee and Adaware.
Malware bytes was able to be installed from a USB key and cleaned up the infection.
We were running Mcafee at the time and afterwards it reported that the dats were 47 months out of date.
A update downloaded but upon trying to scan the engine reported it was corrupted so a re-install was necessary.