The Microsoft SpyWare Program is Questionable

[Adelphia]

I just ran Counter Spy http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ which found 11
instances of spyware. 5 of these were key-logger programs which record
keystrokes and report your typing to a central server - somewhere. I have
been running SpyBot, AdAware, and MS SpyWare with the utterly false belief
that all was well. Little did I know that I was "being recorded". The site
above has a blog area that describes keyloggers and how one they recently
found has multi-megabyte files of data that included social security,
addresses, passwords, account numbers, etc. They say that they felt
obligated to call a few pf the victims to warn them that they were
vulnerable.

Now the sophisticated may say that this site is using exaggerated fear
mongering to sell their software which probably has its own recording
process for them to sell your data. Yes - WHO CAN YOU TRUST. Without bonded
employees each of these little 5 person software shops may be crooks
themselves claiming to protect you. Rather like the Mafia.

Anyhow their software is free for 15 days so run it and see what it can
find. It could be doing nothing but showing false evil processes that really
are not there but then again, they may really be on your PC.....

Dick

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Dick - it'd be most helpful to the beta program if you
could do either or both of:

--post details of the 5 objects found on your machine.
--do a Tools, suspected spyware report from your machine
with these items still in place.

Counterspy is doing useful work in relation to
keyloggers, but I'm not clear what precisely was found on
your machine.

Needless to say Microsoft Antispyware does not
intentionally miss keyloggers of any kind.

 

[Ron Chamberlin]

Hi,
In addition to what Bill proposes, I would also suggest running a full scan
with MWAS from safe mode (F8 at startup)

I recently had a machine wherein I nabbed 3 or 4 keylogger incidents, and
when I scanned from safe with MWAS, actually grabbed one that was an Active
X control logger.

Yes, keyloggers certainly exist, and perhaps there are folks attempting to
profit from that, or raise the hysteria level, on both sides of the street.

I believe Spybot posted something about the seeming rash of keyloggers on
their blog within the past couple of days.

Ron Chamberlin
MS-MVP