Got a virus/trojan or adware/spyware?

[Dean C]

'Twas a typo - thanks

[MindTrix]

Oh kool My computer is in virus/adware hell and nothings fixing it *crys*

[BarHopper]

I think its a good article. Good job.

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

Nice Article.

I would suggest useing McAfee Security Center.

Ive used many different programs (McAfee, Norton, Trend Micro, Hauri) and McAfee is the best.

[trackpads]

This was an excellent piece!

When I was a ubb.t user I loved that they had a forum with articles where you could copy them as FAQs onto your own board. It was a great idea and really helped out.

Dean, thanks for this!

-Jason

[Revan]

Trojan - A trojan is a program that does something undocumented that the programmer intended, but that some users would not approve of if they knew about it. According to some people, a virus is a particular case of a Trojan, namely one which is able to spread to other programs. According to others, a virus that does not do any deliberate damage is not a Trojan. Finally, despite the definitions, many people use the term "Trojan" to refer only to *non-replicating* malware, so that the set of Trojans and the set of viruses are disjoint.

*cough*
OR, you could just say the truth:
A Trojan Horse (trojan for short) is a program designed specifically to open backdoors to your computer. A trojan often comes bundled with regular programs, to appear safe to the average computer user. Once the bundled software is executed, the trojan either loads itself into the memory, or drops other .exe files with seemingly legitimate "Windows-ish" names into system folders. These exe files will then re-open the backdoor every time the computer is connected to the net.
Trojans are mostly used by the novice to intermediate hacker, as a way of gaining access to computer systems not belonging to them.
Trojans do not inprint their code into other programs, but as mentions before often drops other .exe files.
What makes a good trojan such a threat is the fact that newer trojans have the ability to unload any virus protection you may have, and often completely bypass any software and/or hardware firewall. The recommended solution to those problems would be having an antivirus software capable of determining and containing a trojan before you have a chance to run it. My personal favourite is Symantec AntiVirus Corp 9. It is made by the same people who creates Norton AntiVirus (which is highly NOT recommended as an antivirus). What SAV lacks in fancy looks, it makes up for in speed and reliability.

[/end]
As a personal note, I have never had a single virus/trojan on my computer since I started using the above program.
And as for what I know about trojans, well I used to play around with them, so believe me I know how at least SOME of them work.

I decided I had to correct the quoted text, because it is basically a whole paragraph with beating around the bush about whether or not to define a trojan as a virus or not, instead of focusing on what it actually IS and what it DOES.


//out

[BamaStangGuy]

I have never had a trojan or virus since I started using common sense while browsing and downloading stuff.

Don't use a virus scanner and I just use windows sp2 firewall.

Scan with pandas online scanner every now and then but it never finds anything

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Common sense, firewall's or virus scannes don't work for me, i got a trigger happy (click happy) wife

Only thing that really help is a fresh re-install every month.

(PS No, i won't let her touch this PC)

[MentaL]

i been using spotbot for years, its the best you could use ever.. and AVG for virus..!

[EricaJoy]

Good Post! I'd like to add the following to useful tools for people with spyware/adware/virus issues.

http://hjt.iamnotageek.com/ <~~HiJackThis log analyzer