Adware, spyware, SCUMWARE

Last Thursday, someone in my household (hint: not me, and Trixie doesn't use the computer) accidentally stepped into an adware trap and infected our home PC. As I tried to deal with the problem, the image that came to mind was poison ivy: barely brush up against it, and it can make your life miserable.

I installed Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, and CW Shredder and Hijack This, all in addition to my usual anti-virus software. The protective software found most of the nasties, but not all, and every time I would reboot, we would be back to sqaure one.

I posted my Hijack This log to the Tom Coyote Forums but did not receive a reply before I became too frustrated and just decided to reinstall Windows. Fortunately, Bill and I don't have a lot of files and were able to back up everything we needed pretty easily.

Now that the reinstall is done, everything seems to be working as it should, and a valuable lesson has been learned.

For a great read on a similar topic, check out the article From Honeypot to Bot: Unprotected PCs Can be Hijacked in Minutes.

Finally, I do want to say that I was only moments away from blasting away the entire OS and installing Linux. The main reason I did not is that Bill composes on Finale, and I didn't want to have to buy a decent Windows emulator to get Finale to work. Someday, though, I dream of a Windows-free household.