Gadgetopia

Spyware Warrior: Rogue/Suspect Anti-Spyware Products & Web Sites: Here's a list of programs you should always check in you ever get the urge to use a spyware program you've never heard of. Some of the products listed on this page simply do not provide proven, reliable anti-spyware protection or may ...

Ars Technica is watching out for you. They've infect their machines with spyware so you don't have to, and have put the top 5 anti-spyware tools to the test. The common prescription for spyware is Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Anecdotal evidence claims this combination to be the most effective, but can ...

Here's something pretty funny. I was uninstalling some Web search spyware toolbar today. When you try to uninstall it, it pops up a little embedded Web page begging you not to kill it: "WAIT do you know all the great benefits we provide..." etc. I killed it anyway, and ...

FBI s Secret Spyware Tracks Down Teen Who Made Bomb Threats: The FBI is using spyware to great effect, apparently. FBI agents trying to track the source of e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington high school last month sent the suspect a secret surveillance program designed to surreptitiously monitor him and ...

Asterisk on pop-up mogul's gold: An Australian gold medalist is also a reported spyware mogul. While the 21-year-old Begg-Smith may not have been involved in doping or cheating on the slopes, the way he richly supported himself while training was incredibly unsportsmanlike and probably illegal: Begg-Smith was a key player ...

House Passes Tough Computer Anti-Spyware Bill: I hope they arrest the Bonzi Buddy crew en masse and broadcast it live in CNN. By a vote of 399 to 1, the House moved to outlaw a range of aggressive advertising and surveillance activities that have outraged consumers over the past two ...

I had to remove some nasty spyware yesterday from an employee's home machine. It was an IE search toolbar (I'm not going to say the name since I'd rather take a shotgun blast to the face than give them any publicity) that generated a JavaScript error on any search results ...

Review: Testing anti-spyware programs: CNN tests spyware removers. No clear winner he did the best by running two different progams at the same time. [...] I tested Webroot Software Inc.'s Spy Sweeper, LavaSoft's Ad-Aware, Tenebril Inc.'s SpyCatcher, Spybot Search & Destroy and Computer Associates Inc.'s eTrust PestPatrol. To ensure ...

Acer Laptop Like Used Slightly Shotguned Spyware: Awesome. With pictures. RetroDuck.com has been experimenting with new ways to eliminate Spyware from our company computers. This endeavor has cost us hundreds of man hours, and a ridiculous number of computers. On this particular laptop, we researched a combination ...

Download details: Windows AntiSpyware (Beta): This is the result of Microsoft's purchase of Giant. (that was quick...) I had a great experience with this tool today. It found seven spyware apps on my machine. Seven. And I thought I had a really clean machine. Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security ...

Microsoft Acquires Giant, Plans Antispyware Release: Giant's site has essentially been replaced by a big press release. I didn't use any of their products, but they included Spam Inspector, which I hear was quite good. I wonder how many of Bill's four million emails a day it could head off? ...

Texas Sues Sony Over Alleged CD Spyware: And so it begins... Texas is suing Sony BMG Music Entertainment, alleging the company illegally installed spyware on millions of music CDs that Attorney General Greg Abbott says can make computers "vulnerable to computer viruses and other forms of attack."

Windows Defender home: This been a long road. Microsoft bought Giant Antispyware, then engaged in some semi-sleazy tactics to get someone to give up the name "Windows Defender." And here it is, finally. Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, ...

I'm not working from a Windows box as much as I used to these days, so maybe I'm a little too blissfully isolated from the sheer volume of crap that most of you put up with from your computer each day. Tonight, though, I was working from my wife's PC ...

FTC files case against spyware companies: The proprietor of this operation is none other than Sanford Wallace, the original "King of Spam' (and, before that, the "King of Junk Faxes"). The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday filed the first case in the country against software companies accused of infecting computers ...

We've talked before about some of the crazy search engine positioning we get on this site. The GoogleBot loves us. In particular, this page is second on Google for the term "bitlord," behind only BitLord's own site. I don't know how it happened, it just did. This weekend, we got ...

Freeware Arena - 100% freeware since 1997 "Freeware is defined on FreewareArena as software that is available to download and use at no costs, is not shareware, not demos, not trials, and doesn't contain spyware, adware or any type of malware or any form of intrusive components..." Via LockerGnome.

[H]ard|OCP - Dell Dimension XPS 400 Evaluation: This is a review of Dell's "gaming PC" line -- the XPS. The review turns into an huge rant about how much crap is installed on a Dell out of the box. These pop-ups were so annoying, and seemed very much like a ...

A batch of Creative Zen Neeon (their spelling) music players left the factory with some bonus software: Looks like somebody turned off the virus scanner at the Creative production plant--it would appear that about 3,700 Japanese 5GB Zen Neeons shipped since July might have possibly been packing a W32.Wullik.B@mm payload. ...

RealPlayer 10 Adds New Mistakes to Old: A pretty funny lambasting disguised as a review of the new RealPlayer 10. RealNetworks' multimedia-playback program once known as RealPlayer, then RealOne and now, with last week's release of a new version, RealPlayer once again is both widely used ...

'Pharmers' hit online bank users with fraud scam: This could piggyback on spyware pretty easily. All it would take, really, would be a change to your HOSTS file, and there's no URL mismatch to draw your attention to it. The first way is to send virus-laden e-mails that install small ...

ProcessLibrary.com - The online resource for process information!: Very handy when you're trying to figure out just what your 10-year-old nephew has installed that's making your machine run like a 286. In the recesses of your computer, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. Some hog system resources, turning ...

Fix your mom s computer for mother s day: Joel rules. What a great promotion idea. This Sunday is Mother s Day. Why not fix your mom s computer? You know: remove the spyware and adware, install Firefox, and make it so that weird toolbar toast doesn t pop up every 15 seconds. To make ...

Lifehacker: I'm not real quick to add things to my aggregator. I only have about 20 feeds in Bloglines. But this new addition to the Gawker family of blogs is really top-notch. If you like Gadgetopia, you'll love Lifehacker. Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, ...

Sony aims at pirates and hits users: This is a good overview of the rootkit mess that Sony created with its DRM system. This has been covered a lot else where, but the gist is that Sony put DRM on an album that hid itself on users' hard drives and ...

On the heels of their Mac mini reliability survey, Macintouch today published the results of the PowerMac G5 reliability survey. While the numbers aren't as good as for the mini, they are still good; of the 6817 respondents to their unscientific web poll, only 10.17 percent reported having problems. Anyone ...

It's L-i-n-u-x, that is an Operating System: The city of Tuttle, Oklahoma had a Web server crash and the OS (CentOS) had to be reinstalled. Apparently someone forgot to put the Web site back up, because the default Apache page started appearing where the Web site should have been (you ...

Gates: In Ten Years, it's a Windows and Linux Game: OS News has a good report on an interview Bill Gates gave at "a conference" (it's not specificed which). The quote of the title seems to indicate that Bill doesn't give Apple a fighting chance. He says some other interesting ...

New name flap for Microsoft -- but this time its legal right is clear: Microsoft recently announced they would rename their Anti-Spyware product to "Windows Defender." However, a developer in Australia was already using that name for his software. His software wasn't active (he has stopped developing it a year ...