I had intended on writing an entry a couple of days ago, observing the fact that I only seem to write every 2 or 3 days. Well, in the meantime my daughter went searching for the lyrics to a song by a Christian singer named Staci Orrico (sp?) and the site she went to wound up giving me the most malicious spyware I have seen to date. It was crazy. They had completely hijacked my system. It took me almost 5 hours using 3 programs to get rid of it all because it works against your registry and lies resident in memory. I have come to the conclusion that invading my computer is the same as invading my home. There ought to be a law, rather, and enforceable law, against it. By visiting a website sponsored by the company you inherently agree to allow them to load stuff on your computer according to one program. I don’t think so. I apologize that I didn’t save any of the info of where she picked this up at but I can tell you about 2 freeware/dontaionware programs that worked well in helping me rid myself of this nuisance. One was “Ad-Aware” from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/default.shtml.en and the other is “Spy-Bot” from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html . My Norton anti-virus helped identify some problems, but wasn’t quite as helpful when it came to ridding myself of the problem. I recommend you study both of these programs and how they work and what they do and download them and run them. I had received a recommendation to uninstall “Spy-Bot” after using it because it would interfere with cookies from sites that were harmless as well as detect malware, spyware and adware, but I am leaving it on for now.

If you do use legitimate adware you will want to note that your licensing agreement says you have to leave it intact, so don’t break any contracts.

As The Good Book says, “T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L.” There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Or was it that Russian guy in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” by Heinlein?