Preventing Spyware Question

Good evening everyone,

I have a question concerning chaslang's FAQ on scanning individual accounts to make sure spyware isn't present.

Long story short I had a malware infection that Shadow_Puter_Dude and chaslang helped me to get rid of (thanks again guys)

Me and my wife have seperate user accounts and I'm wondering if I should go ahead and scan her account, when I get online everything seems fine but she hasn't been online in a few days.

If I should have to do this, would I have to post my logs and so forth , I mean I wouldn't have to go through the entire removal process again unless something was found, correct?. Oh yeah, and what scans should I perform, same ones I did initially?.

Thanks

James

 

Hello James,

Yes, you should run the scans on your wifes account also. No, you don't have to post the logs, unless something was found or you would like for me to look at the logs.

 

Hello Shadow_Puter_Dude,

I'll do this asap, I guess I'll post the Panda log and HiJackThis log since I don't know what I'm looking for , If you've got some time yes, please take a look at them for me.

Thanks

James

 

No problem.

 

Hey Shadow_Puter_Dude,

Well finally after several hours the scans are now complete I did bitdefender, panda and HighJackThis in that order, I forgot and ran panda first and remembered I was supposed to run bitdefender first ,well now I think I have a bigger mess than I thought .

On my desktop I have of course Norton Internet security 2006, ad-aware-se, ccleaner, microsoft defender2, spybot, highjackthis, plus in folders cwshredder and kill2me.

To my surprise my wife has only Norton, adaware-se and ccleaner on her desktop. I've been searching these forums and I guess from what I've been reading, when I run all of my weekly scans she gets no scans right? (when I saved them to my desktop they didn't get saved to hers I guess?) .

OK, as I was running bitdefender, norton popped up and said it found a trojan horse but it was resolved, a popup in the lower right corner said internet explorer is waiting for a temp scan numerous times.

Now in the lower right corner in my desktop icons there is a yellow shield with an exclamation point on it when I put my cursor on it, it says "updates are ready for your computer, click here to install these updates" I could be wrong but I don't remember being notified like that for an update, could this be a "trick"?, it kind of looks like a windows symbol but I'm afraid to click on it .

I was going to download and run the rest of the scanners, but you mentioned you wanted logs, and as far as I know, these online scanners are the only ones that give logs. Alright here are her 3 logs.


Thanks

James

 

Open Windows Explorer, navigate to and delete:

Now run CCleaner. If you have Windows XP delete the contents of C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch.

Then, as an added precaution, Go to Start -> Run and type: cleanmgr and then click OK. Make sure the boxes for these are checked:
Temporary Files
Temporary Internet Files
Recycle Bin

And Click OK.

Lets flush all your restore points and create a new clean one for your system.

Disable And Enable System Restore

How to Protect yourself from malware!

That should take care of everything.

 

Alright, should I download ccleaner on my wife's desktop or can I clean it from mine?

 

You can run it from the Start Menu.

 

Ok, I ran ccleaner from my start menu but had to delete this

C:\Documents and Settings\Regina\Local Settings\Temp\twc\installer\bin\AddFavorites.vbs from my wife's account as I can't access her folder from my account (no problem though) .

I did everything else you told me, although when I did system restore, it was in normal mode and it didn't prompt me to restart (I did it anyway).

Now for verification:

1. The spyware tools that are not downloaded on my wife's account, should I go ahead and do this, so I can scan mine and hers separately.

2. How often should I do these "complete" scans with logs and everything.

3. If either one of us catches a virus we should scan both accounts.


James

 

Most of the tools don't need to be downloaded again; if they were installed correctly they will be available on all accounts. Only a select few 'specialty' tools will not run under all accounts. Why, they weren't installed in such a maner to make them available to all accounts; and they don't need to be.

How often you should do complete scans, is really up to you. The common recommendation is once a week. It really depends on your surfing habits.

If your system becomes infected again, it is always prudent to run the scans on all accounts. However, you want to clean one account before you scan the other account.

 

Hello Shadow_Puter_Dude,


I thought my wife didn't have them installed on her account, then I searched further and found them in drive C: and then under program files , ccleaner, spybot and defender2, these are now on her desktop!!, I also found all the others too .

I don't know why they weren't installed initially on her desktop like mine was . One more thing, when I do these "scans with logs" , should I go ahead and post the logs for review here, and just indicate in my post that these are for a "checkup" ?.



Thanks

James

 

You can post them, if you like, and I'll look at them.

 

Ok, thanks and have a nice day .