Controlling Pop-Ups and Spyware

If you are getting pop-ups, especially at random when you are not surfing the web, then you are one of about 500 million people infected with spyware. Spyware is software that covertly gathers information about you through your internet connection without your  knowledge, usually for advertising purposes. Spyware can also gather information about e-mail addresses and even your passwords and credit card numbers. These evil programs get on your computer by being "bundled" with free things like screen savers, password keeping utilities, music swapping programs, clip-art, and others. Some of these programs will stop working when you remove their advertising spyware, and some must be removed themselves before you can remove their spyware.

The solution

1. The first thing to do is to go to Start - Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs and one-at-a-time highlight & remove anything that says: Web Search, Rebates, Browser enhancement, Ebates, Shopper, GAIN, New.net, Moe Money Maker, or IE Enhancement. This is only a partial list because it grows more every day, but this will give you a good start, and the remaining steps below should clean up the rest.

2. Reboot. If it asks you to reboot after each one, you don't have to -- you can wait till the end and do it once.

3. Then, you need to go get a free spyware remover. If your computer has Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP, go to Microsoft.com, download the "Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta" right from their homepage, install it, click File - Update, then run a "FULL" search. Make sure to set to "Remove" or "Quarantine" anything it finds unless you recognize it. It will remove nearly all of the programs causing the pop-ups. The Microsoft one is free, excellent, and is always running to stop more programs from getting in.

If you have Windows 98 or Windows ME, please upgrade :).

There are two other decent programs that you can use: Spyware Doctor and Ad-Aware. The free download versions are only cleaners - you must pay for them if you want the monitoring protection.

Link to Ad-Aware:

http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10319876.html?tag=lst-4-1

Link to Spyware Doctor:

http://www.download.com/Spyware-Doctor/3000-8022_4-10377263.html

Install one or both, update them first, then run a full scan. Select and remove anything the program finds.

4. The last thing to do is to go to Internet Explorer, then Tools - Options. Go to the Security tab and select Default level and OK. This should keep most things from getting in. Your best bet would be to download Mozilla Firefox, which is another web browser which has less security problems.

The above bit of effort is really worth it in terms of a faster, less “crashy”, more secure computer. Simply turning on a pop-up blocker is only masking the symptom, not curing it.