From ghoullio on IAP - “Does anyone know a good way to get pop ups and spam elimnated from your system? i have Spybot, but it doenst really seem to eliminate anyhting. is there a way to bomb the people who put this stuff on your PC without asking? the most annoying one i have is this preview thing that pops up and jacks my media player and plays whatever new movie is coming out. im notincredibly PC savvy, so any help would be appreciated…”

And my answer:

My popup should still work, it works with FireFox popup blocker.

As for cleaning your system of virus and crap, there are basically two things you can do. Neither are easy.

1) Ditch Microsoft and run Linux (what I recommend)

OR

2) Backup your data (except the porn), format and re-install Windows XP from CD. Then, remove all icons pointing to Internet Explorer from the menu bar, quicklaunch bar, and desktop. and Install FireFox (you’ll be very please once you get familiar with it and learn about all the extensions available out there).

3) Don’t download porn. Unless it’s images (or mpeg). All those little movies on eMule (forget BearShare or Kazaa, as you agree to run “adserving software” when you install them) you download are packaged with .exe files which install this kind of crap. I’m not saying you’re a porno freak. But every person who has this problem, also admitted they were looking for porn at one time or another.

4) Never accept a certificate or download an application unless you *completely* trust it. In other words, you can simply do this by limiting yourself to open source apps only, as the source code is free to review, and there are entire communities around them, so you can trust any problems have been removed (an open source project with spyware doesn’t last a day). Plus, security holes (all software has them) are fixed in a matter of days, sometimes hours with open source software.

5) Ideally, you should setup an underpriveged user on your new XP install called “dummy” or something, and only login as Administrator when you need to install something or config something. This will drastically curb the risk you run. Even I get spyware once in running as “Administrator” once in awhile because they are tricky bastards.

6) Also, one very important thing, is to go into your settings and remove the thing that hides file extensions. So for example if I gave you a file called foo.doc it would only say “foo” in your c:\temp folder.

You definitely want to see the “foo.exe”, because these spammers create filenames like “foo.doc.exe” and since it’s hidden, all you see is “foo.doc” and click on it thinking it’s a word doc and safe.

From a folder go Tools->Folder Options->View Tab…then look for “hide extensions of known filetypes” and UNCHECK the box. I also check the boxes that put the full path and file in the titlebar of a folder too.

That my friends, is Computing 101 - chovy style.

As for a WinXP clean/sweep software, you can try Bazooka (but that doesn’t really gaurantee anything). I’ve heard good things about it and it’s totally free (not sure if it’s open source though, but I’ve seen some good reviews about it).