Some Information please

Am posting this in the hope it will help my daughter, as unfortunately she cannot access her pc at the moment. Will briefly try and explain as best I can.

My daughter had a telephone bill of...£1271.01 - this was for 2 days only!. When she rang to enquire about it, she was told it was because of International and Premium rate calls made via websites.

After she picked herself off floor, she told me she had about blank and various other sites appear instead of her usual isp home page, namely Free 6, Spyware and about blank with additional pop ups.

When she can finally get back on line, what can she do to get rid of this problem please as she is really upset and doesn't want to attempt to use pc in case she gets more bill for doing this.

Any advice or help would be very much appreciated.

regards

Joan

 

One way to do it.

Joan,

You'll need an antivirus program, spybotS&D, and adaware all updated and placed on a CD or preferably a DVD that her machine can read. I hope you or someone you know can do this. Then she can run the programs from the CD or place them on her hard disk to run them. Combined, they should do most of the cleanup. You can find these by clicking "links" in my signature.

She should not go online utill she also runs hijackthis, downloaded by you and added to the CD, then placed on her hard drive in its own folder and run from there. Have her save a log and copy it to a floppy disk for you to upload here so the folks here can advise you what to do next.

 

You can find where to get Spybot and Ad-Aware at the Quicklinks below.
After installing them, be sure to update them before running their scans.

 

I have found Spyware/adware is the most called about tech problem i deal with these days as a technician, and it has replaced viruses as the no.1 PC annoyance and problem cause. And many do more harm to your PC and its performance than viruses do as well.

Most spyware/adware will be removed using such programs as Spybot and Adaware.

Some people will need specialist adware removers for certain adware varieties
that are harder to kill. Things like varieties of coolwebsearch adware, and other homepage hijackers require programs like CWShredder to remove them properly. CW Shredder is specifically for the many strains of coolwebsearch there is. I mention cws as it can be a hard one to remove and it regenerates itself quickly. It is also widespread.

If you had adware/spyware that cost your so much money because it dials premium services, i would make sure it was gone and format. In some cases i have come across, where adware is rampant and damage is done to your OS, a format and re-install is the best thing to do for it. It may take less time to do than weed out some adwares that wont go anyway.

Backup your data, and re-install Windows including a format, if you cant get it all out.

Clients of mine who had adware and SPAM problems and have followed my advice below, have not had a repeat episode of such problems.


1) Resist installing programs that offer free this or that. Things like search bars, weather monitors, multimedia sharing software like Kazaa, Limewire and WinMX or any spyware remover that gave you the adware to start with and offered you a cure for it .

Peer-to-peer network file sharing software like Kazaa are the worlds biggest adware/spyware magnets, and also increase your risk of virus attacks. I understand why people wish to use such software, but advise against it if you dont have a tech in your family.

I have a couple of clients whose teenage kids insist on using Kazaa and alike software, and every few months no fail, they pay me to re-install thier PCs. Over time the software draws in so much adware it chokes your PC, and in many cases internet access becomes impossible.

2) Have a good firewall program that also blocks adware and viruses. Like Nortons Internet Security or McAfee. Kapersky is another good one. Also keep it up to date, doing manual updates as well as automatic ones, and run regular manual scans of your disks.

3) Dont disable your firewall once in place, to play online games or for some other reason. Find out which firewall ports you need to open, that your game or whatever needs to use, and only open what you need to.

4) When having to give your email address online to get a download of any kind or to sign up for something, dont give your real email address. You should set up a Yahoo or Hotmail account which you can clean out now and then and wont have to face every day all the SPAM you may get if you end up on a mailing list. You can go and empty it out occassinally or retrieve an email sent to it if needed. Note you must use these types of accounts a certain amount or they expire.

People out there make a living selling mailing lists and if you get on one, you will end up on many over time without doing a thing more to encourage it. People with spamitis often have to abandon thier email address to get rid of it.

5) If you visit a website that requires you to install an activex or other control into internet explorer so you can view it properly, or download something, you should be very careful which you agree to install. Unless you must use the site, or you know the plugin is common and safe (like Macromedia flash player or Realplayer) say NO when asked to install browser plugins. Most of them will attract adware and slow down your PC and internet. And they breed!

6) Finally keep you Windows updates, up to date, especially security upates that fix holes in Windows security. If updates give you trouble, best to try and fix it or work around it with the update in place where possible, than to not have the update at all.

My PC is always online, 24/7, and i dont get adware or viruses. But many of my clients get heaps of it until they do the above things. All i do is what is above, and i also play online games with my firewall on. Particularly C&C Generals which requires 4 or 5 ports to be opened in your firewall to play. But 4 or 5 is nothing, there are a bit over 65500 possible ports.

Finally remember this : NOTHING IS FREE! There always is a cost somewhere, and that cost may be paying your technician to fix your PC or your own time fixing it.

Cyas

 

Joan,

Bottom line: to quickly get things working and back online this is the way to go. I would add removing and rewriting the partition and boot sectors using fdisk if you or your helper are comfortable in simple DOS; I've seen one that format alone didn't solve.

Use removeable media like CDs for this, and run the disks through the antivirus and other programs before using the backed-up files. The infected file can't be fixed on the CD, but you'll know it's there, and, if you absolutely need it, copy it to a magnetic disk and run the antivirus on that. Of course, not all infected files can be recovered.

 

Thank you all for your replies, sorry took me so long to reply. Daughter is going to reformat I think when she gets her bill sorted out, but thanks for replies, much appreciated.

Joan