I just removed 307 spyware thingys-ASK ME ANYTHING!

[Mobius]

yikes. didnt know it was that bad...

[MidwestTransplant]

1. which program did you use?

[Mobius]

5. lava soft "Ad-Aware"

eom

[Occulus]

2. Good mothering God.

Just how many porn sites did you visit, anyway???

[Mobius]

not that many actually

Its just been a long time since I made a sweep.

[qnr]

3. How much more responsive is your computer?

I don't have any experience with them - not because I can't, because pretty much any computer/OS connected to another is a potential target, and I recognize that. Still though, I've been owning computers since 1979 and have never experienced it, so I'm curious, aside from the possibility of losing personal information, how much of an impact did 307 of them have on your processing speed?

[Mobius]

7. ALOT! My comp is 5x as fast.

It was so gradual, but finally Im like ack! I gotta do something.

[Renew Deal]

4. Do you feel lucky it wasn't worse?

You should. That's all I have to say.

[Mobius]

9. No I feel lucky that you have graced my thread with your presence

{sarcasm} I am so not worthy{/sarcasm}

[Renew Deal]

10. I cleaned a machine today...

with over 500 objects in ad aware. 40+ more in spybot 28+ in spy sweeper, 15 with AOL spyblocker. Then I ran the programs again and found more shit.

[qnr]

11. I glanced at a thread on a forum, the Suprnova one I think, and

someone was talking about more than six thousand of them, I found that a little unlikely, but I'm no expert on the matter.

Edit: added "more than"

[Mobius]

13. HOLY BALLS OF falafel !

Im not sure I believe that. But if someone went for years without ever checking...and it does happen, it MIGHT be possible.

[Mobius]

12. eeeek

put security on high in internet options

[agates]

6. What OS and browser are you using?

If you are using Internet Explorer, consider changing to Firefox. Much less problem with popups and spyware.

[Mobius]

8. sbc yahoo's browser

[BlueHandDuo]

14. What kind of "thingys" mostly?

AdAware comes up with a lot of "tracking cookies" on my system, and while there's a certain privacy concern with those, they don't really affect general performance like the memory-resident spyware apps.

[Mobius]

15. yeah cookies mostly

but it catches the major stuff too.