I came home from work today, and to my unpleasant surprise, there were a slew of strange icons on my desktop. One for a Platinum Visa Card, another for a Pop-Up Blocker, Virus Scan, Poker, Online Betting...

I asked my wife WTF she was doing downloading that garbage onto my rig, and she swears up and down that she hasn't been on my machine all day. I was the only other person on the machine, and that was this AM at like 4:45. I looked thru the Add/Remove Programs menu, nada. I ran AdAware, SpyBotS&D, and AVG antivirus, and the icons are gone from the desktop. I also ran RegCleaner, got rid of the registry entries for that crap. Here's the thing, though: on just about any site I go to, there are certain words that match up to this B2S BS, and they show as a green hyperlink. Mousing over them, the IE mini-icon in the lower left corner of the screen tell me they're a "sponsored link" (see pic)



Ah, I almost forgot: there was also a toolbar installed under my Google Bar as well... Anyone know anything about this? How can I get rid of it? How can I block it from coming back? Is there a class-action suit I can get in on against these asshats?

Running IE6, WinXPHomeSP2, cable modem thru Siemens 2-port router. Using the Win AND router firewalls... HELP!!!

PS: In the preview pane, the same thing is still happening, I get the green links with the "Sponsored Link" message at the low left corner...

Try downloading HiJack This and run it as well. Their forums are very supportive as well if you are confused on the entries you find.

http://www.download.com/HijackThis/3...-10227353.html

I did... it's still there, the green links, even here on PR, on the Forums listing page...

I'm gonna kick the dead horse again by saying that you would be a lot better off getting the Mozilla Firefox 1.0. It's much like the old Netscape Navigator browswer that less than 5% of the world's population uses. The rest of the world (I believe 94%) uses Internet Explorer because it's the only thing that they know...therefore, a lot of this kind of crap is written to exploit the security holes in IE6.

Firefox is good......IE6 is bad.

As far as the "B2S"? I'll see what I can track down tomorrow if no one here is able to sort it out. Good luck with the Hijack...they usually are pretty good.

Rob

P.S.
Once you go "tabbed-browsing", you never go back.

Edit:

Here's something............

Here's something else............

Better yet, go to www.begin2search.com......in the lower right hand corner, they have a link that says, "Uninstall toolbar". Don't know if it'll work but it's worth a shot.

Hope this helps...

Rob

Ouch, I can sympathize with you. My wife and both my kids are pretty computer literate, but sometimes cannot recognize bad stuff. I purchased PestPatrol along with ZoneAlarm Pro, and also run AdAware and Spybot. Since I installed it on all the computers I haven't had a takeover.

The crazy thing is, PR, gmail, and my eBay accounts are all I looked at yesterday and this AM. When I got done, there were none of the icons on the desktop that I found when I got home. If my wife didn't do it, my 18-month old daughter must be a genius, or the dogs have learned how to open a door and operate a computer... They ARE Golden Retrievers, but there's just no way...

I remember having that same spyware or whatever it is too. I tried so many times to remove it but it managed to come back. I kept messing around with it and I finally removed it somehow. I think it was with Hijack this and I did some other stuff. Maybe you can try this if you haven't already.

http://sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/a...in2search.html

Ok,i in addition to the AdAware SE and Spybot that I've been endorsing for a long time, I'be begun using these two tools as well, they were the only thing I could find to clear my laptop from a couple of nasty digital parcels.

CWShredder

This one is a very effective tool for removing the notorious Cool Web Search variants, some of these can be almost impossible to remove by hand.

Spyware Blaster

This one adds to your list of blocked websites known sources of malware and tracking cookies. Also recommends changes to browser settings when insecurities are found. Plus as a bonus, it does the same for Firefox!

And yes, mentioned above was HijackThis, a great tool for locating and removing malware, has a task manager that seems more effective, let me close a process that the Windows TM wouldn't let me close, which was vital, unless I booted into Safe Mode.

Good Luck!

I remember I had something similar where it installed about 4 icons on my desktop, just like the ones you described. It took me like 3 hours to 86 that crap. I ended running through msconfig, TS, Antivirus software, Spybot, Ad-aware, add/remove programs, safe-mode, disk cleaning, manual registry editing....the whole 9 yards before it stayed dead. There is some real nasty crap out there.

If I remeber I ended up getting it from one of those pop-ups you get occasionally and clicked "Yes" by accident. Have since switched to Firefox and I'm a much happier fellow.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I've downloaded and tried just about everything, but nothing seems to be working in IE. Right now I'm using FireFox (I have used it before, just not default).

Can't remember which one of the progs it was that gave me the list, (think it was SpyScan), but I have a list of all the files, Reg Keys, and such that need to be deleted. I'm thinking that if that doesn't work, I'm just gonna try to backup as much as I can and wipe the HD, do fresh install of WXP, and only download the updates before I go online to my fav sites again.

In addition, I also plan to password-protect the crap outta my machine. If I'm not around, no one gets on it, period.

Oh, and last but not least, a Happy Thanksgiving to all

EDIT: I used the list that ScanSpyware gave me, and deleted as much as I could, now I'm down to 20 spyware stuffs on the machine, as compared to 97 from the first run. Gonna go thru and exterminate that crap, run it again, and continue until they're all gone...

Ive been getting a wave of spyware too recently.

I got this one program called DeskBikini thats been driving me insane. It's installer pops up every five minutes or so. I have Adaware , Spybot ,and just about every program I can think of. It's in C:\DB.EXE so I deleted it but it comes back every five minutes. I even opened it up with notepad and just started typing to ruin it. Even that didnt work. Still can't get rid of it. Any Ideas?

And who ever is responsable for these digital abominations deserves a kick in the nuts from every user that got his rig infected with these craplets.

Ok folks, again ,thanks for all the tips and nice spyware killer proggys...

What I did that finally worked was to use the list from ScanSpyware... Went thru the cookies folder and deleted all the ones it said were suspicious or low level threats. Then ran regedit and deleted all the reg keys it listed. After each delete round, I ran the scan again to see if anything came back. Eventually, I got the "0 Spyware found on your computer" message. Then I went one-by-one, running AdAware, SpyBot, SpySubtract, CWShredder, the list goes on and on... They all came back "Clean"... I'm still using FF, but am gonna jump on IE6 just to see if the green links still show up when I log into PR.

Again, thanks for all the help...

Quote: Originally Posted by Rob I'm gonna kick the dead horse again by saying that you would be a lot better off getting the Mozilla Firefox 1.0. It's much like the old Netscape Navigator browswer that less than 5% of the world's population uses. The rest of the world (I believe 94%) uses Internet Explorer because it's the only thing that they know...therefore, a lot of this kind of crap is written to exploit the security holes in IE6. Firefox is good......IE6 is bad. As far as the "B2S"? I'll see what I can track down tomorrow if no one here is able to sort it out. Good luck with the Hijack...they usually are pretty good. Rob P.S. Once you go "tabbed-browsing", you never go back. Edit: Here's something............ Here's something else............ Better yet, go to www.begin2search.com......in the lower right hand corner, they have a link that says, "Uninstall toolbar". Don't know if it'll work but it's worth a shot. Hope this helps... Rob

We may disagree on politics, but you're right on when it comes to choice of browsers.

GrandpaNoob72, Take the Firefox plunge. You won't look back. Once you try tabbed browsing, IE is SO last "weak".

Hasta...

Quote: Originally Posted by Morion Ive been getting a wave of spyware too recently. I got this one program called DeskBikini thats been driving me insane. It's installer pops up every five minutes or so. I have Adaware , Spybot ,and just about every program I can think of. It's in C:\DB.EXE so I deleted it but it comes back every five minutes. I even opened it up with notepad and just started typing to ruin it. Even that didnt work. Still can't get rid of it. Any Ideas? And who ever is responsable for these digital abominations deserves a kick in the nuts from every user that got his rig infected with these craplets.

What you might have to do, is restart in safe mode, do a search in the registry AFTER backing it up and delete all references to the directory it's in then delete the directory itself. Restart in safe mode and run RegClean, just to be sure. Remember, BACK UP the reg.

For the record, I read somewhere the interview of one of these worthless pieces of trash and they are of the opinion that they have the right to do anything they want with your computer, even if you just so much as look at their websites. Man, you talk about arrogant! I'd like to meet one of these guys, just me and him, 5 MINUTES, THAT'S ALL I ASK!! Ehem, there, I feel better now.

Hasta...

I wonder how he/she/it would feel if I "arrogantly" proclaimed that I had the right to do whatever to them, just for being in the same room, and having looked at me funny when they walked in... Oh, yeah, Baby, IT'S ON NOW....

I'd like nothing more than to dress them up in Insurgent Apparel, give them "li-li-li-li-li" lessons, and send them on a one-way cruise down to the Federal Caribbean Vacation Destination, sunny Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While they are there, they can learn the real definition of hijacking and terrorism, and maybe get a grip on how much we hate the crap that they "market".

Quote: Originally Posted by GrandpaNoob72 I wonder how he/she/it would feel if I "arrogantly" proclaimed that I had the right to do whatever to them, just for being in the same room, and having looked at me funny when they walked in... Oh, yeah, Baby, IT'S ON NOW.... I'd like nothing more than to dress them up in Insurgent Apparel, give them "li-li-li-li-li" lessons, and send them on a one-way cruise down to the Federal Caribbean Vacation Destination, sunny Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While they are there, they can learn the real definition of hijacking and terrorism, and maybe get a grip on how much we hate the crap that they "market".

Not guantanamo bay. Let's send them to Abu Ghraib. Then we'll see what they think about having their privacy violated.

Quote: Originally Posted by Morion Not guantanamo bay. Let's send them to Abu Ghraib. Then we'll see what they think about having their privacy violated.

Ooooooh, NICE idea... Now to file an injunction to keep from having the Coalition demolish the place...