Ounce of Prevention vs. Spyware & AdwarePreparation Steps:
If you are on a DSL, T1 or broadband connection. You need two kinds of firewalls, one hardware and one software. (ISC's Filtering Server can replace both firewalls for multiple computers networks.) The Dlink we sell is $50; Linksys $80. (Any price under that is for the router, not the router/firewall. Both look alike.) Software firewalls come in many variations. Make sure the firewall you installed asks if you want to allow certain programs to "phone" the internet. (Norton Internet Security 2005 is recommend at about $50 or less from us.)Do the weekly cleaning as on this page or the "Disk Cleaner & Maint" icon under System Tools on newer ISC computers.
Go to Control Panel, then "Add Remove Programs" and remove all programs that have a description like:
Toolbar, search bar, IE enhancement, ...bar, search... Kazaa (free version) and all other free music download programs (old Napster too) Bargain..., Web savings..., Shop..., Free Shopper... Internet Casino or Poker programs... Instant Access... Date managers or time sync Specific by Name: 180 Search Assistant, Active Alert, Answer Works, Belt.exe, Bridge (not a game), Clear Search, Cool Web Search, Date Manager, Gain Publishing, Hot Bar, Increfind, Internet Optimizer, Lycos Sidebar, Precision Time, Search It Now, Software Update Manager, Twisted Humor, Web Hancer, Web Search Tools..., Wild Tangent, Win 32 BI Application, Win Tools, Win Tools for Internet Explorer, Windows SR 2.0, WSEM, sorry this list goes on and on.
Reboot when is says to do so. Reboot every 2 or 3 removals anyway. Remove any "instant messaging" programs you don't use. If you get lost, bring your computer here for service. If you find one of these programs installed then you have tons of them usually! All Windows XP Home computers are probably infected, typical ones in the shop so far 10-30 infections each.Second check your virus program. Many Win XP computer users don't know the virus program is dead till they go to use it. Make sure it is up to date; run its updater program manually. If it is "expired" then buy Norton or McAfee from us at around $16-$50 depending on version or other programs coupled with it. Run a manual scan of the whole computer.
Install the spyware scanner on the CD from us. Scan the whole system, fix whatever it says to do. If you did the third paragraph above this should not find much more than registry entrees and a few left over empty folders.
Why so much prep work?
Because once our "Registry Keys" program is installed you might not be able to remove currently installed Spyware.All the work you do ahead of time before bring in you computer saves you money.
There are 4 files in the ISC's "Registry Keys." First file NoActiveX installs blocks various Spyware programs from installing on your computer. NoDomains & NoCookies block various web sites from knowing personal information about you or stops access to those web sites from Internet Explorer. NoDomainAggressive is for people who really hate advertising in general. These are not for the major internet surfers that like "advertising" sites like radio stations or magazines on line. These aggressive are more geared toward the work place.
Updates and such...
These keys take about 20 hours to produce from the various sources that comprise them and monitoring newsgroups other sources that find them. So the more people you tell and the more people who use them will determine how fast and how often updates are available.At present these updates are buy then use and pay for updated programs later. It would be nice to put a period of time for "free" updates like virus programs and such.
Face it 40 new customers are needed to break even for each update.