Rogue Anti-Spyware
From StopBadware.org...
So, Grandpa Albert thinks he might have badware on his computer. It’s just not running the way it used to. Everything is slow. He doesn’t see any pop-up ads like last time but these days it feels like he’s always waiting for something to finish processing.
Grandpa Albert is too cheap to hire any “Nerd Herd” techies to come over so he calls his tech savvy niece, Aimee. She suspects that his computer may be part of a bot network. Millions of computers on the internet today are part of bot networks and there’s a high likelihood that Grandpa innocently visited a hacked site which downloaded infected software without his knowledge.
“Darn criminals,” Grandpa mutters on the phone. “No one’s controlling my hard earned CPU cycles without MY consent!”
Aimee doesn’t have the time to stop by because she’s working on a presentation for the She’s Geeky Un-conference in Mountain View this October. In the meantime, she tells him to try downloading some anti-spyware and she’ll troubleshoot when she can visit later.
Grandpa Albert surfs the net searching for the products Aimee suggested. Seems like there are tons of anti-spyware products out there making lots of promises. He tries typing in ‘spy bot’ into his search engine. Hmmmm. Which one is the right one? Should he download www.Spy-Bot.net, www.SpyWareBot.com, www.SpyBot-SD.net, www.Spybot.com or one of the others?
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So, Grandpa Albert thinks he might have badware on his computer. It’s just not running the way it used to. Everything is slow. He doesn’t see any pop-up ads like last time but these days it feels like he’s always waiting for something to finish processing.
Grandpa Albert is too cheap to hire any “Nerd Herd” techies to come over so he calls his tech savvy niece, Aimee. She suspects that his computer may be part of a bot network. Millions of computers on the internet today are part of bot networks and there’s a high likelihood that Grandpa innocently visited a hacked site which downloaded infected software without his knowledge.
“Darn criminals,” Grandpa mutters on the phone. “No one’s controlling my hard earned CPU cycles without MY consent!”
Aimee doesn’t have the time to stop by because she’s working on a presentation for the She’s Geeky Un-conference in Mountain View this October. In the meantime, she tells him to try downloading some anti-spyware and she’ll troubleshoot when she can visit later.
Grandpa Albert surfs the net searching for the products Aimee suggested. Seems like there are tons of anti-spyware products out there making lots of promises. He tries typing in ‘spy bot’ into his search engine. Hmmmm. Which one is the right one? Should he download www.Spy-Bot.net, www.SpyWareBot.com, www.SpyBot-SD.net, www.Spybot.com or one of the others?
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