Spyware Removal

I now consider myself an expert on removing "spyware" from computers. I got a call from someone who I hadn't talked to in years asking me how to remove a virus from his computer. After several unsuccessfully attempts to help him over the phone, I brought over a CD with several programs that will remove spyware. It took three hours to remove the poltergeist that was hiding within his computer. I proclaimed: "This computer is clean", and luckly it didn't turn inside-out and get sucked into nothingness.

To fix his computer I ran several programs. I first ran "AdAware" which will find and remove various programs and cookies that may or may not do any harm to your computer. On the first run, it found around 30 bad items, including "malware" and "data miners", both of which are much worse than spyware. That still didn't solve his problem. When we tried to go to his credit union web site, the browser got redirected to another site, and then his default home page changed to that site. So then I ran Spybot Search and Destroy. That program found six more programs to delete. The problem was still there. So I ran AdAware again after downloading the latest update to it and it found another 20 files to delete. This finally fixed the problem.

The main culprit was a program called "Cool Web Search" and after researching that program on the internet it seems it is one of the nastier programs out there that infects computers. It is not really a virus, so Norton Antivirus won't catch it. It installs on your computer automatically when you visit "certain" web sites unless you have ActiveX disabled on your computer, and most people have that enabled. I read about another program called "CWShredder" which is designed to remove this program, but I didn't run it on his computer, but if the virus comes back, I will try that. A good place to download the programs I have talked about is download.com. So the moral of the story is: Practice safe computing, or, he who visits questionable web sites will suffer.