Death to Hijackers
So anyway I think capital punishment for these guys who make these browser hijackers is just too easy. They need to undergo slow torture. With a spoon. Maybe something involving a turkey baster.
My brother was browsing along the other day and clicked on a link and wham he is hijacked. No little pop up saying something or another wants to install this that and the other thing and do you approve. Nope, the brother didn't have his firewall up and almost all of his protections were set to allow everything. He had Nortons running but that just was not enough. Microsoft Service Pack # 2 is coming soon and it is suppose to address some of these issues. Hopefully it will do the trick. Read about it here.
At first I thought this was the funniest thing to happen in quite some time. He comes down after an hour of trying to make the pop - ups go away and I chuckle maniacally. Hey it wasn't my computer. Dude wanted the computer fixed fast as the wife would suspect he had been viewing questionable material and has an irrational belief that the DSL is inherently bad. (First person I ever heard defend AOL and was happy with 56 K). He is in a bad spot and as his loving brother of course I find it funny.
Then he appeals to my ego and asks me to fix the problem, to use my vast computer knowledge for the powers of good and to save him from the wrath of she who must be obeyed. The thing is most of my technical know how is MS - DOS old. Back in the day I was the goto guy. I could get most anything running myself and the things I couldn't do I knew where to look for advice. These days while I do spend a great deal of time using a computer I'm not well versed in the XP playbook. I had to admit to my brother that his problem would not be a one day quick fix. I would have to do research.
So after a few a few searches I found the Tech Support Guys. It took me some time to read through the various solutions. I could have posted my brothers problem and asked for help but these guys operate there site on donations and I would have felt obliged to find some way to send them cash. (I'll tip double next time I swear!) So instead I browsed through and tested links (many of the links to the hijack fixing software have broken links). Finally I thought I was prepared.
I was wrong. I downloaded program after program and ran them, then checked my task list then ran different ones. It was like trying to make a cocktail First add one part Spybot search and Destroy then mix in ad - aware consult your HijackThis log but be ever aware that you are playing with registry entries an this can have serious consequences.
I went and did more research and after a couple days (there may have been a bit of screwing off and video gaming in between) the brother's wife was starting to try and take matters into her own hands. She started deleting things that she felt were suspect and was looking for the system restore disks which, fortunately in this instance, they do not ship out anymore. (I think some of these files were written to the system restore partition. I may be wrong it is just something I notices while running the Ad aware deep scan) I may have stopped her just in time.
Today I came in fresh and put in a four hour session and was finally able to get the evil search bar and all the other crap off, I think. I also added a ton of protection. Well the best free ware has to offer.
I never want to do this again. I'm sure someone who knew what they were doing could have had it fixed in no time, but that is not the point. This intrusive crap has gone to far. It is not just a pop up here or there or a bit of spam in the mail box but these people are changing your settings and putting programs on your computer. They need to be criminally and civilly prosecuted. It's time for some draconian measures. The need beatings and jail time and to be humiliated in front of friends and family so that all will learn we just don't pull this kind of crap.
Join the crusade against evil browser hijackers and write your legislators today.
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My brother was browsing along the other day and clicked on a link and wham he is hijacked. No little pop up saying something or another wants to install this that and the other thing and do you approve. Nope, the brother didn't have his firewall up and almost all of his protections were set to allow everything. He had Nortons running but that just was not enough. Microsoft Service Pack # 2 is coming soon and it is suppose to address some of these issues. Hopefully it will do the trick. Read about it here.
At first I thought this was the funniest thing to happen in quite some time. He comes down after an hour of trying to make the pop - ups go away and I chuckle maniacally. Hey it wasn't my computer. Dude wanted the computer fixed fast as the wife would suspect he had been viewing questionable material and has an irrational belief that the DSL is inherently bad. (First person I ever heard defend AOL and was happy with 56 K). He is in a bad spot and as his loving brother of course I find it funny.
Then he appeals to my ego and asks me to fix the problem, to use my vast computer knowledge for the powers of good and to save him from the wrath of she who must be obeyed. The thing is most of my technical know how is MS - DOS old. Back in the day I was the goto guy. I could get most anything running myself and the things I couldn't do I knew where to look for advice. These days while I do spend a great deal of time using a computer I'm not well versed in the XP playbook. I had to admit to my brother that his problem would not be a one day quick fix. I would have to do research.
So after a few a few searches I found the Tech Support Guys. It took me some time to read through the various solutions. I could have posted my brothers problem and asked for help but these guys operate there site on donations and I would have felt obliged to find some way to send them cash. (I'll tip double next time I swear!) So instead I browsed through and tested links (many of the links to the hijack fixing software have broken links). Finally I thought I was prepared.
I was wrong. I downloaded program after program and ran them, then checked my task list then ran different ones. It was like trying to make a cocktail First add one part Spybot search and Destroy then mix in ad - aware consult your HijackThis log but be ever aware that you are playing with registry entries an this can have serious consequences.
I went and did more research and after a couple days (there may have been a bit of screwing off and video gaming in between) the brother's wife was starting to try and take matters into her own hands. She started deleting things that she felt were suspect and was looking for the system restore disks which, fortunately in this instance, they do not ship out anymore. (I think some of these files were written to the system restore partition. I may be wrong it is just something I notices while running the Ad aware deep scan) I may have stopped her just in time.
Today I came in fresh and put in a four hour session and was finally able to get the evil search bar and all the other crap off, I think. I also added a ton of protection. Well the best free ware has to offer.
I never want to do this again. I'm sure someone who knew what they were doing could have had it fixed in no time, but that is not the point. This intrusive crap has gone to far. It is not just a pop up here or there or a bit of spam in the mail box but these people are changing your settings and putting programs on your computer. They need to be criminally and civilly prosecuted. It's time for some draconian measures. The need beatings and jail time and to be humiliated in front of friends and family so that all will learn we just don't pull this kind of crap.
Join the crusade against evil browser hijackers and write your legislators today.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 2:38 AM
1 Comments:
eeek. browser hijackers do suck. my dad got one called passthison (or something like that). from that he got some sort of weird porn thing. poor guy.-- so i had to explain to mom that the porn popups that came up while they were sending me or one of my sisters an email weren't because of something dad was doing....ugh.
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