Nervous about yahoo now
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My mother has been regularly using the yahoo forumns and games for
quite some time now. She started noticing strange icons in her
system tray and a couple of times a small window would pop up
containing information about out home network etc. Understandably,
she was quite nervous about this.
My brother went over and installed Zone alarm and that spyware
detector (name escapes me). He found 100+ spyware hit and erased
everything.
He had her visit all her regular haunts around the web. After each
visit he re-ran the spyware gizmo. On yahoo (and only on yahoo) she
was prompted to install "security updates" and the like. Zonealarm
then blocked outgoing packets that contained system and personal
information. Running the spyware detector again resulted in hits.
My mother then emailed Yahoo, saying that This software had detected
spyware being installed from the Yahoo site. She didn't receive a
reply but as of today she has no access to any of her former yahoo
groups, games, etc.
Has anyone else run afoul of this sort of thing? I haven't found
anything on my comp from visiting the groups here, but I don't use
any of the other services - and NEVER choose "OK" when prompted to
install anything from ANY website (Except the MS Update scanner
jobbie).
quite some time now. She started noticing strange icons in her
system tray and a couple of times a small window would pop up
containing information about out home network etc. Understandably,
she was quite nervous about this.
My brother went over and installed Zone alarm and that spyware
detector (name escapes me). He found 100+ spyware hit and erased
everything.
He had her visit all her regular haunts around the web. After each
visit he re-ran the spyware gizmo. On yahoo (and only on yahoo) she
was prompted to install "security updates" and the like. Zonealarm
then blocked outgoing packets that contained system and personal
information. Running the spyware detector again resulted in hits.
My mother then emailed Yahoo, saying that This software had detected
spyware being installed from the Yahoo site. She didn't receive a
reply but as of today she has no access to any of her former yahoo
groups, games, etc.
Has anyone else run afoul of this sort of thing? I haven't found
anything on my comp from visiting the groups here, but I don't use
any of the other services - and NEVER choose "OK" when prompted to
install anything from ANY website (Except the MS Update scanner
jobbie).
Comments
$0.02 and then STFU.. [noparse]:D[/noparse]
I've been on quite a few yahoo forums and have not seen the behavior you
describe (malicious spyware installs). I regularly run AdAware
(http://www.lavasoftusa.com) to seek and destroy spyware and it regularly
kills off bits in my cookies folders or registry keys but it hasn't found
the kind of thing you describe.
My guess is that, like most older folks who are new to computing, it is
very difficult to discern the difference between "real" and "fake"
pop-ups. There are may unscrupulous companies that will trick the unwary
into installing "spyware" under the guise of fixing a problem (i.e.
"WARNING! Your internet connection is not optimized click here!") and/or
offering a "needed" service (i.e. People can see your IP address! Click
here to fix it now!").
Things like Gator, Comet Cursor etc. show up quite often when I am asked
to investigate a slow or malfunctioning computer that belongs to an older
person that is new to computing (i.e. my mom, my step-mom etc.). After I
strip out all the "junk" the machine usually performs fine. I really
don't think this is a problem with Yahoo per se, but more a problem to be
cured by education of the affected parties and close supervision by more
experienced users.
As for the idea that maybe Yahoo "kicked her out" of her games etc. I
would venture a guess that when you ran the spyware detection program it
killed off all the cookies she had that were being used by the games to
keep track of here credentials (uname/password) and her high-scores etc.,
so it only *appears* she can't get into the games.
She can probably re-register and start over again and then you can look
carefully at each game and/or site and set your browser to only accept
cookies from that particular site. Also, I would highly reccomend moving
to using Mozilla as your browser (http://www.mozilla.org) as the default
configuration of the browser is to not allow pop-up windows. Once you
kill the pop-ups, many sites are much safer for the inexperienced... [noparse]:)[/noparse]
Vern
--
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
vern@t... www.txis.com | is up, then we obviously don't need
Cell 507-7851 Desk 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" VLG
ghidera2000 said:
> My mother has been regularly using the yahoo forumns and games for
> quite some time now. She started noticing strange icons in her
> system tray and a couple of times a small window would pop up
> containing information about out home network etc. Understandably,
> she was quite nervous about this.
>
> My brother went over and installed Zone alarm and that spyware
> detector (name escapes me). He found 100+ spyware hit and erased
> everything.
>
> He had her visit all her regular haunts around the web. After each
> visit he re-ran the spyware gizmo. On yahoo (and only on yahoo) she
> was prompted to install "security updates" and the like. Zonealarm
> then blocked outgoing packets that contained system and personal
> information. Running the spyware detector again resulted in hits.
>
> My mother then emailed Yahoo, saying that This software had detected
> spyware being installed from the Yahoo site. She didn't receive a
> reply but as of today she has no access to any of her former yahoo
> groups, games, etc.
>
> Has anyone else run afoul of this sort of thing? I haven't found
> anything on my comp from visiting the groups here, but I don't use
> any of the other services - and NEVER choose "OK" when prompted to
> install anything from ANY website (Except the MS Update scanner
> jobbie).
>
>
>
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, just send mail to:
> basicstamps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> from the same email address that you subscribed. Text in the Subject and
> Body of the message will be ignored.
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
confirm her mother's story about her older sister getting pregnant by
sitting next to a boy in church. Abby's reply was "no, somebody moved."
In other words, chances are at some point the computer user was prompted
to install something and did so, without realizing what it was. If you
are a regular Yahoo! gamer you get prompted to install all sorts of
stuff, and since some of it is 3rd party software, its quite possible
something else was installed as well. Not to mention Yahoo! Messenger
and all that stuff.
Keep in mind there are also ways that a web site can glean things about
your PC, such as your IP address, computer name, operating system,
etc... without ever installing a thing. Some of these Windows "features"
that allow these sites to do this can be turned off. Sounds like you
need to do a bit of Winders homework.
On Thu, 2003-07-31 at 13:18, ghidera2000 wrote:
> My mother has been regularly using the yahoo forumns and games for
> quite some time now. She started noticing strange icons in her
> system tray and a couple of times a small window would pop up
> containing information about out home network etc. Understandably,
> she was quite nervous about this.
>
> My brother went over and installed Zone alarm and that spyware
> detector (name escapes me). He found 100+ spyware hit and erased
> everything.
>
> He had her visit all her regular haunts around the web. After each
> visit he re-ran the spyware gizmo. On yahoo (and only on yahoo) she
> was prompted to install "security updates" and the like. Zonealarm
> then blocked outgoing packets that contained system and personal
> information. Running the spyware detector again resulted in hits.
>
> My mother then emailed Yahoo, saying that This software had detected
> spyware being installed from the Yahoo site. She didn't receive a
> reply but as of today she has no access to any of her former yahoo
> groups, games, etc.
>
> Has anyone else run afoul of this sort of thing? I haven't found
> anything on my comp from visiting the groups here, but I don't use
> any of the other services - and NEVER choose "OK" when prompted to
> install anything from ANY website (Except the MS Update scanner
> jobbie).
>
>
>
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, just send mail to:
> basicstamps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> from the same email address that you subscribed. Text in the Subject and Body
of the message will be ignored.
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
over at my Mom's and tried to log into yahoo for her. Figured she's
forgotten her password or something.
Go to yahoo groups and her cookies are intact - it logged her in
automatically, showing her groups etc. Try to do anything at all and it asks
for the password - which doesn't work. Used the "I forgot my password" link,
put in the info and yahoo ID (which is verified by seeing it on the password
request in the first place). Account does not exist.
She definately got wiped from Yahoo.
Original Message
From: "Bill Boyer" <daweasel@s...>
To: "Basic Stamp List" <basicstamps@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 1:05 PM
Subject: Re: [noparse][[/noparse]basicstamps] Nervous about yahoo now
> This reminds me of the Dear Abby letter where a little girl wanted to
> confirm her mother's story about her older sister getting pregnant by
> sitting next to a boy in church. Abby's reply was "no, somebody moved."
> Though off topic, this is something I see write often so I'll state
my
> $0.02 and then STFU.. [noparse]:D[/noparse]
I hate to add to the OT but...
MS has a file, index.dat that keeps all sorts of records of your
surfing. of course, it's a hidden file.
What I did was to make a sub directory in my cookies folder and then
each boot, autoexec.bat copies the approved cookies, like my yahoo
password one, into this sub-directory.
then while still in DOS, autoexec.bat deletes the remainder of the
cookies directory AND the index.dat in
c:\windows\temporary internet files\content.ie5\index.dat
then copies my good cookies back to the main cookies folder.
I use lcopy to copy the long file names under dos.
If I get a request for a password each day, I find the cookie for
that site and add it to my approved list.
my approved list is a total of 4 cookies. wanna check how many you
have ?
Dave