Re: THEORY: more questions
| From: | Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, November 26, 2003, 0:57 |
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On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 00:50:24 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
wrote:
> Quoting Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>:
>
>> Argh. You poor sod. You've been invaded by spyware, and probably a
>> number
>> of other nasty things. There are a number of programs that'll fix your
>> predicament. My favourite is Spybot Search & Destroy. You can get it by
>> searching for "Spybot" at www.download.com I don't know the official
>> URL,
>> I'm afraid, and it's the wort of thing I would never trust Google
>> results
>> for.
>
> Simply instaling Spybot and having it kill everything it didn't like
> didn't
> help, but I'm too tired to try anything cleverer tonight. Thanks anyway.
>
> Is there, BTW, any known point in the thing beyond fooling money of
> advertizers by inflating hit counts? You wouldn't have to provide what
> appears
> to be a working search engine for that ...
I suspect it's intelligence-gathering in nature. It tracks the incorrect
URL you entered, and whatever search terms you use, to select advertising
to subject you to, including possibly pop-ups that appear while viewing
other peoples websites (if in the past you've accidentally downloaded and
installed (silently) the helper app that lets it do that). If it manages to
snag your user name and host name from your HTTP connection, it might also
sign you up for themed spam, if it's easy to guess an email address from
the names.
You might have unknowingly downloaded and installed any number of other
nasty things, like click-loggers and key-loggers, that record and report
your surfing behaviour to the spyware maker for further use in targetting
advertising to you.
Also, with your username and hostname combination, it can attach your
browsing habits and sell the whole lot en masse to other advertisers,
including "legitimate"-appearing ISP and hosting suppliers.
Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if it sells search results, providing
priority listings to companies that pay it to do so, and/or to other
dishonest sites run by the same outfit.
Paul