Hyperlinker   Dialers    Propagators 

Removing Adware and  Spyware 

Many websites will intentionally place Spyware or Adware on your computer.
It is normal for a site to place a cookie which helps you to retrace your steps when you return to their site and these are basically harmless. However Spyware or Adware can be malicious (send personal or financial information back to the author) or simply annoying by attempting to redirect you by pop-ups. 

These can cause your computer to be redirected to sites that you had no intention in visiting or even connect to webservers and download additional malicious code. All this jams up your computers resources and slows you down to a crawl. See speeding up your computer To combat this type of invasion you will need a utility written for this purpose. Norton's  and McAfee's newest anti-virus programs have some protection against what they are calling threats, which would include spyware. However we have found a highly recommended  and FREE service is called Spybot Search&Destroy. This downloadable program really works on spyware but is not an antivirus . For antivirus protection you need a robust service like McAfee or Norton. There are some threats  that are so stubborn that they have to be removed manually by an expert in command line entries. Pretty hard to find an expert that has these skills now-a-days seeing as how we have become spoiled by GUI (Graphic User Interface) better known as Windows and virtually no-one remembers how to manipulate their computers without it. Many people  when faced with this kind of nasty scripts will wind up formatting and reloading there operating system. Unfortunately this causes you to lose all data that wasn't backed up to a removable disk such as a a CDR or RW or as we prefer, to an alternate hard drive. Unfortunately you can often times move viruses or spyware to your back up copy with out realizing it. You will most likely see ads on this site that promote software or services but just because they show up on this site does not mean that we endorse them or have even tried them. Much of the advertising, such as in the cell to the right, is supplied by a third party and is supposed to be relevant to what is on each page and changes from time to time.

We have recently come across a couple of new threats, you should or may already know about.

 One is from Serverlogic3.com called "hyperlinker" that plugs in to a browser and then searches each page you view for keywords. It then creates a hyperlink (if affected you will see highlighted words all through your text that were not placed there by the webmaster) to a sponsor that sells a product that may be related to the keyword. It will be obvious if it is running in your computer as some of the hyperlinks will have double underlining. This slows down you browsing and is misleadingly directing people away from the site they chose to be on to sites that are full of annoying ads and pop-ups. Not too sure how it gets installed on the computer but the following is the remedy for removing the "hyperlinker". 
If you'd like to remove Hyperlinker, open Add/Remove Programs from your Control Panel. If, for some reason, there is no entry for Hyperlinker in Add/Remove Programs, please follow these instructions: 
Click Start 
Click "Run" 
Type "command" in the Run box 
Type "cd C:\Windows\system32" or cd "C:\WINNT\system32" (depending on your operating system) 
Type "regsvr32 -u lmf32v.dll" 
Restart your computer 
After restarting, you may delete the files "lmf32v.dll" and "lmdv.bin" from your Windows\System32 directory

"Binet"

Annoying Self propagating spyware product which links to multiple servers and then installs a hoard of other spyware and adware. We believe the culprit is called Binet, but then it may just be one of the items installed by an even more devious piece of malicious code. This got into a computer that Downloaded a file from a peer to peer service. It was hidden in a file and was not revealed when scanned before opening. Whatever it was in this file that triggered the invasion  did a serious piece of work. The threatproducts mentioned above detected a few, but some of these were so devious that they had to be removed in command line mode, because none of the common anti-threat software were able to totally eradicate them and they continued to multiply. Some of the names that were running in the background of this Windows 98SE machine  follow: 

bluestart,  motion,  aludqzmj,  popuppers,  edow,

mm15, ceres.dll,  RYRVWLR.exe,  xhrmy.exe, XHMY,

packager, call, RVRWIR, 180AX,  rvrvwlr.

These are just a few of the ones that  showed up by doing a control/alt/del keystroke to bring up the "Close Program" dialog box.
Hope you never get this bunch of ner-do-wells as it totally ties up a computer, keeping it so busy that it is nearly impossible to even function well enough to combat them.

Download this utility to help remove this nasty Binet script.

Once Binet is removed you will have to run your anti spyware program to remove the spy or adware. 

Next use your search or find feature in the Windows Start Menu, search for the names in the list as shown above. If they exist then check with your "Add/remove"  feature in Control Panel to see if any of them are listed there. If so remove them this way, If not, navigate to the directory that the file folder is in (according to your "Search" results) and right click on it and select "Delete". Now we wouldn't normally tell you to delete any programs in Windows but this is the exception. 

Once you have removed all of them, then you need to run a good registry utility to remove the entries from the registry. If you have Norton Utilities (Norton System Works) run WinDoctor. We further recommend that you  download and purchase Registry First Aid as this is the best program we have found to really clean up your registry.

Dialers

Hidden deep inside your computer there may be lurking little malicious programs called "dialers". These slip in when you click on things that pop up and say stupid things like "Your a winner- click here". The only free lunch here is the one you give them by letting them into your computer. That is not to say that all pop ups are bad but be careful.

This nasty group effects people who are still using "dial up modems". The intent of this type dialer program is that it attempts to dial a high-cost number using your modem. This will result in unexplained fee on your phone bill. If you are using a high-speed DSL or Cable Modem you will not be effected unless you have left your old modem installed and the cable is still plugged in. In this situation you can simply unplug the cable to defeat this culprit, but it is better to remove the modem, if it is a card type, or disable it in the BIOS if it is integrated  (built into the Motherboard). Removing unnecessary hardware in these ways will free of some of your systems limited resources. However if you need to use your modem for internet connection then you will need to scan  your computer often with a program designed to catch these slippery dudes.  You should do this even if you use a high-speed connection. Use a commercial product such as Norton to detect and remove them. 

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