PSA: How to kill porno spyware.
A computer-savvy friend accidentally clicked on a link in porno spam when he thought he was deleting the message. It installed 600, yes 600, nasty spyware programs on his PC. Browser windows started popping by the dozen. (Hint: To close such Windows fast, do alt-F4).
He ran PestPatrol as well as Norton multiple times and finally managed to kill all the popups. However, his browser, Internet Explorer (IE) had multiple porno toolbars installed on it. Removing them didn’t help. The spyware simply reinstalled them. There were so many of them that it was taking 15 minutes to log onto a website.
He thought he’d have to reformat the hard disk to kill these programs. However, with some serious digging, he found a solution.
In Internet Explorer, go to Tools /Internet Options /Advanced. Click ‘Enable third party browser extensions’ OFF.
All the IE toolbars were gone and the browser was back to normal.
Some thoughts:
1) Always run a spyware killer.
2) Have multiple browsers installed. He was able to access the Net using Netscape, as it was unaffected. (He had to have IE working because Norton will only update your antivirus files if you run IE, no other browser allowed). I use IE, Mozilla, and Opera.
3) Don’t go to porno sites or click on anything in a porno email. A friend recently decided to surf porno sites to see what the heck was there. Her computer is now almost unusable.
4) Ditto for KaZaa. Don’t use it. it will kill your system. Another friend had to reformat after using it.