This link is very informative re: Cool Web Search
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/cws/
The following advice should also be helpful.
First:
I suggest you start by going here:
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=227
The folks there at Spywareinfo have a lot of experience in dealing
Hijackers/Spyware/Malware. There is no charge for the help and information
available but, they do request donations. Read that first page carefully,
and following its instructions you will download a little program called
HijackThis. Its purpose is simply to scan your computer and generate a log
of everything that is running at that moment. It does not decide what is
Good or Bad. That's what the experts at Spywareinfo will do. So *DO NOT*
just arbitrarily start deleting what it finds.
Next:
Set up a user account at Spywareinfo and post your LOG there, not here.
There are many experts on that forum and
someone will analyze it and let you know if anything is amuck and what you
can do to fix it.
You always want to keep your virus definitions up-to-date, as well as use
tools like Spybot and Ad-Aware which also must be kept up-to-date every time
*before* you use them to scan your machine.
Spybot
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html FREE
Ad-Aware
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ FREE & Pro
If you need a good FREE antivirus try AVG at
http://www.grisoft.com/
This may sound like a lot of work and it is. And there's still no
guarantees. But, you'll learn a whole lot in the process and have a much
more secure computer.
