the "Makes-you-gald-your-on-a-Mac" thread

[srobert]

Whoa! I Knew this was bad but not THAT bad! I do a lot of shopping and banking on my mac. Makes me glad I don't use a PC.

Extract from the article:

PCs 'infested' with spy programs

Do you know what is lurking in your hard drive?

The average computer is packed with hidden software that can secretly spy on online habits, a study has found.

The US net provider EarthLink said it uncovered an average of 28 spyware programs on each PC scanned during the first three months of the year.

—> Link to the Whole Article <—

 

[Krizoitz]

might want to fix the thread title

 

[srobert]

Bummer. Looks like I can change the title of my first post but not the title in the thread listing. Oh well.

 

[Dippo]

Thread titles aside...

This isn't news to me. I am always having to fix people's PCs that are infested with this stuff. There is a lot of "legitmate looking" software out there that install loads of spyware.

I would think that an OS can be designed to eliminate these kinds of problems, but of course I wouldn't expect it to come from Microsoft because they won't even put a pop-up block on their browser!

 

[rueyeet]

The ordinary user may not realize that those pop-ups blaring "Spyware detected on your computer! Click here to remove" are often linked to spyware programs. They're even made to look like a legitimate Windows alert box. Took me ten minutes one day to convince my mom not to click on one of these; not because she's stupid, but because she maintains her low level of computer literacy behind a determined wall of technophobia. At least she called me and asked--how many just click on this stuff?

Also there's a lot of adware and spyware crap floating around P2P networks and the like. And that's not even going into all the people who enable HTML formatting in Outlook 'cause it's the only way to use all the pretty stationary, completely unaware that it leaves them prey to Web bugs embedded in their email.

At least in OS X, programs ask you before they install.

 

[srobert]

Don't you like being on a mac when you end up on a weird site and a .exe files downloads on your desktop. you can just watch the little bugger and tell it: "Unfamilar terrain buddy? What? You can't run yourself on my puter? hehe too bad for you. Meet my trash bin."

 

[Counterfit]

Don't you like being on a mac when you end up on a weird site and a .exe files downloads on your desktop. you can just watch the little bugger and tell it: "Unfamilar terrain buddy? What? You can't run yourself on my puter? hehe too bad for you. Meet my trash bin."

Yes, yes I do

 

[wdlove]

I have often wondered about the frequent popup alerts, warning of Spyware. Requesting that you download and do a scan. Noticed that it's just for PC. Since I don't know the company I would be leery of running the software.

 

[MrMacMan]

Yes, yes I do

Yeah be too.

'Owned are you? Can't do ANYTHING can ya?'


As a service to my school I bring my USB Key-Drive around to each of the computers and do a 'Adware' and 'Spybot Search and Destroy' scan and over a weeks time I get over 10,000 instances of spyware!

Aint it grand?