I successfully edited my hosts file, and I have XP Pro. I will leave it someone with more technical know-how to suggest how to do the edit on your particular system. Just wanted to let you know it is possible.

The hosts file is a text file. It does not have the .txt extension.

So, if you're using wordpad, notepad, etc you have to select "all files" in the open dialogue to see it.

I was able to open it with wordpad.

On XP Pro, you probably need to have admin privs in order to do it, I would imagine.

If you're running spybot (and maybe adware), spybot does have an option in the tools menu (I believe) to add a bunch of these ad sites to your hosts file. It may also block changes to it for all I know. It does have a registry change blocker (teatimer or something like that). If you're using spybot to do it, you probably don't need to do it manually.

If all else fails, I put a copy of it here:

http://www.flex.com/~dmk/HOSTS

Save the old HOSTS file (HOSTS.orig) and copy this one over and put in the windows/system32/drivers/etc directory as the name HOSTS.

-David

I'd highly recommend using Spy Sweeper (or the other anti spyware progs.) to make the localhost entries in the hosts file, for two reasons I can think of:

1.) inexperience/uncertanity doing it, as mentioned above.
2.) more importantly, when you update the definitions for any of these antispyware programs, additional URLs pointed to the localhost can be added to the hosts file. An example is when a URL changes, such as when "a.tribalfusion.com" changes to "b.tribalfusion.com". Some ad sites (esp. shopping assistance sites) are notorious for playing a game of leap-frog with this feature. Note that Tribalfusion.com is not one of these.

Tribalfusion IS NOT spyware.

Banner ad's ARE NOT spyware.

Cookies ARE NOT spyware.

Tribal Fusion is nothing but an Internet banner placement service Flyertalk uses to show relevant banners, the "spyware" is nothing but an innocent cookie Tribal Fusion uses to monitor the ad's it has served you, making sure you don't get 1000 public service announcement banners and zero commercial banners.

I wish these "spyware" scanners would once and for all stop claiming that cookies are evil. TRUE spyware is nasty stuff, impossible to remove without decent knowledge and not made for innocent purposes.

Thanks for reminding us that cookies are meant to be a good thing and in most cases they are a very good thing.

But back to Spyware and how difficult it is to remove, Spybot successfully flags DS0 Exploit on my system, and claims to remove it, but it is still there. Anyone know any tricks to getting rid of this? Or what the heck it is and should I care?

I have a few questions about "spyware"...
- what is it?
-can you give some examples of spyware?
-what does it do?
-how do you know if you have it?
-can spyware upload files from my pc without my knowledge?

Over the past few days I was overwhelmed with new browser windows popping up. Was this caused by spyware? I think I got rid of everything, some of the programs were incredibly difficult to uninstall.


I am now trialling Firefox.

This is a known issue in spybot 1.3. The DSO exploit was actually patched in windows a long time ago, so as long as you are up to date (windows update), you can safely igore the message from spybot s&d 1.3.

http://forums.net-integration.net/in...howtopic=24389

-David

Thanks LIH!

I'll give you an example of some REAL spyware:

http://www.scumware.com/apps/scumwar...-Applications/

In general spyware is something that actually RUNS on your PC (spyware is ACTIVE, not passive like a cookie). Packages like "Gator" are also spyware, they trck exactly WHAT you do, send that information to a central site and offer popups, banners and emails based on that. For example; if you visit the Washington post, you might suddenly get a banne for the NYT. If you visit Uniteds website you might suddenly get a banner for AA.

Gator was one of the first, and got such a bad name that the company behind it actually renamed themselves "Claria". On their website you'll see a list of "handy" applications that in essence do nothing but track your web usage:

http://www.claria.com/products/software/

As for trying Firefox; WISE MOVE!

The majority of Spyware, Scumware and Malware manage to make their way onto PC's through exploits in Internet Explorer and it's Activex feature, but there are still plenty of programs you can download that will contain masses of spyware, a family member recently brought their PC to me to have cleaned, it was completely full of spyware and was barely unusable, all they did was install a screensaver they got off a website, so as you see picking a safe browser is only part of the solution, picking your downloads wisely is just as important.

DSO Exploit
 

Try this link
http://www.nsclean.com/dsostop.html
Download and run (or just run from its location) the program and you can check whether you are vulnerable to the DSO exploit. It allows you to toggle vulnerablity on and off.

Enjoy!

Eradicating CoolWeb
 

Here is a program that tries to destroy CoolWeb (nasty spyware.)

http://www.intermute.com/products/cwshredder.html

I did not have it on my personal computers, nor did any of my family, but I have run it at work and removed CoolWeb. People downloading all sorts of free games, etc., are infecting the computers and they get so slow!
Try the stand alone version.

I have to disagree with this. I'll agree that banner ads are not true spyware. However they are not benign, friendly content either.

TribalFusion, as one example, has in the past served up links to malacious sites, such that if you click through a few layers you will get infected with malware. This is documented on malware investigation/cleanup websites, spywareinfo.com for one. Furthermore, TribalFusion does use tracking cookies, and it may seem innocent and even useful that the intent of these tracking cookies is to keep you from getting thousands of public service announcements, but why would anyone want to have an advertiser track which ads you have been server and have viewed?

The scanners don’t have a zero-tolerance approach to all cookies, but they are clearly biased on the side of caution. For example, you can select to always accept cookies from a site or URL if you so desire. When TribalFusion says ‘our cookies are benign’ and the makers of AdAware say “no, they’re not”, who do you believe, the people wanting to serve you ads, or the people wanting to protect your privacy.

You are mixing up a few facts.

CLICKING on a banner and ending up on a site that might offer spyware doesn't make the cookie guilty, you are master of your own mouse. Even if you block all cookies then you'll still get ads and you can still click on ads.

As for an advertiser being able to track which ads you have been served not being useful, you obviously don't work in marketing :D I have paid for ads, and host ads for clients, and the one thing all companies want is to know exactly how many people have seen the ad, when it was and where they came from. For customers and web users it's a good way of getting an even amount of different banners instead of the same stuff day in day out.

Tribalfusion uses their cookies to make money by selling ad space, and adware makers claim cookies are evil because that is the only way they can really convince many people that "cookies are evil".

Cookies have been around since 1994, they were never really considered nasty until the term spyware was introduced, and spyware scanners came to market, in late 2001.

And why should anybody care about what kind of banners the ad industry wants to push on us? There are so many simple ways to block them that many of us have never allowed them to clutter up our screens and almost never see any of them. From occasional use of unprotected systems, I have concluded that they rarely, if ever, add any value to my browsing sessions.

As for cookies, nowadays you do need them to perform certain tasks and to allow some sites to work properly, but IMHO there is really no point in allowing most of them to survive the session. Generally, only those carrying your ID for signing in at favorite sites are worth allowing to survive. I would say that many of us have been routinely cleaning out the cookie files since they started showing up in the mid-90s and are now quite happy with the cookie handling tool in Firefox, which saves one quite a lot of cookie cleanout duty.

We can also talk about popups (and their evil spawn, the popunder), which could have been a very useful and elegant technology but which has been so usurped by parasitic advertisers that there is almost no point in allowing them at all. When you get a site that doesn't seem to work, then you can choose whether to allow their popups or to go right over to a competitor that doesn't bother you with this kind of nonsense.