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This includes (but is not limited to) MySearchBar, DashBar, Xupiter, HotBar, UCMore, and many others. Most add-on toolbars for Internet Explorer are malware sources.

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(See below.) They are classic browser parasites.Ĭommon piggyback sources of advertising malware are most popular file-sharing applications that aren't open-source (including Kazaa, iMesh, LimeWire, Morpheus, WinMX, Xolox, Grokster, and others), the free version of DivX Pro (which installs Gator), GoZilla (which has a veritable raft of crap), InternetWasher (ditto), and many 'free' applications found on sites like.

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Often, they are are self-updating, and will sometimes install other advertising systems, or alter your system's security settings to allow for easier drive-by installs. Some of them will change the banner ads or links on web pages. These advertising systems will show pop-up ads, sometimes when you're not even browsing. Sometimes uninstalling the application will get rid of the bundled advertising system, usually it will not. Sometimes the application will warn you about the bundled advertising system, sometimes they will not. These advertising systems have names like CyDoor, Gator (who have renamed themselves 'Claria' to hide their tracks), TopText, etc. The other kind of ad-supported application installs a separate advertising system onto your computer, that runs all the time whether the ad-supported application is running or not. The banner ads in the unregistered versions of Eudora and Opera fall into this category. The benign kind has an advertising system built into itself, that shows you advertising while the application is running, and which has no effect on the system when the application is not. There are two kinds of 'ad-supported' applications. There's basically two 'vectors' for malware to get onto your PC: piggybacking on other applications, and 'drive-by' installs through Internet Explorer. Step 1: How did this crap get on my computer in the first place? If you're not on a Windows PC, none of this applies to you. Malware is not currently a problem for either the Mac or Linux/FreeBSD users, mainly because nobody bothers to write any of this crap for those platforms. However, some of the automated anti-malware tools will also find and remove certain viruses and trojan horses, if present.Īlso note that we're only talking about Windows here. That sort of thing is adequately handled by existing anti-virus software. I'm not going to be talking about actual viruses here, or traditional 'trojan horse' backdoor packages.

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Provide no uninstall feature, and put its code in unexpected and hidden places to make it difficult to remove

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Leave security holes allowing the makers of the software (or, in particularly bad cases, anyone at all) to download and run software on your machine ĭegrade system performance and cause errors thanks to being badly-written Make your modem (analogue or ISDN) call premium-rate phone numbers ('dialers') Set browser home page and search settings to point to the makers' sites (generally loaded with advertising), and prevent you changing it back ('homepage hijackers') Watch everything you do on-line and send information back to marketing companies ('spyware') Īdd advertising links to web pages, for which the author does not get paid, and redirect the payments from affiliate-fee schemes to the makers of the software (such software is sometimes called 'scumware') Plague you with unwanted advertising ('adware') Unsolicited commercial software can typically: The parasite problem has grown enormously recently, and many millions of computers are affected. 'Parasite' is a shorthand term for unsolicited commercial software - that is, a program that gets installed on your computer which you never asked for, and which does something you probably don't want it to, for someone else's profit.

It's recommended reading, after this document. I'm going to steal a description of browser parasites from the excellent parasites page, which is one of the best references currently available on the topic. The technical term for most of these things is usually 'browser parasites', since most of them interact with Internet Explorer in some way, but in this document I'm going to call them by the catch-all term malware.

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They usually mean anything that's installed on your PC without your knowledge or permission, and which has unwanted effects. When people talk about 'spyware', most of the time they're talking about a whole range of malicious software, and not just software that actually spies on you. The Spyware/AdWare/Malware FAQ and Removal Guide