| Author | Message | ||
     Angelwild327 |
anyone been here yet?? http://gabbly.com/www.badweatherbikers.com Thread | ||
| Pwnzor |
beware the unencrypted connection that can be monitored remotely. keylogger alert. | ||
| Samiam |
Pwnzor knows what he's talking about. I'd stay away. Sam | ||
| Molly_hatchet |
well it made my computer crash so that was fun.....thanx for the info think il stay away. | ||
| Sgthigg |
thats weird | ||
| Angelwild327 |
sorry to hear that, Molly...hopefully nothing bad will happen...but I've met a couple buellers on there tonight and everything went fine... and I did hear about the key-logger, so I have been careful.. | ||
| Pwnzor |
The potential for that chat client to contain a keylogger or trojan style adware platform is very high. It could also scan your whole hard drive with full administrator priveleges, disable your antivirus software, or much worse. Or it could be totally benign. I'm watching all my port activity on my router, and I just logged in briefly to the client and I notice no improper traffic going out. But it doesn't mean it can't. I would say just don't give your phone number, date of birth or any other numeric information about yourself. Should be ok, and in most cases the worst case scenario is a bunch of ads that pop up. Pwnzor General's Warning: Use Gabbly at your own risk and observe a strong safety protocol. | ||
| Angelwild327 |
Thank you, General... saw ya' log in there.. thanks for checking it out, hopefully it won't have any adverse affects... too bad those virus makers don't all have buells to ride.. the internet would be a much nicer/safer place.. | ||
| Pwnzor |
9 times out of 10 its an advertising gimmick. They might be logging your ip address with your remarks and scanning for keywords in order to advertise directly to you. Adware can be very illusive and difficult to get rid of. Often times an open system will be host to ads being streamed to all the people in a neighborhood. Their computer goes really slow, but doesn't get any pop-ups. They call geeksquad and get charged $100 per hour and they claim to fix it but still the computer is very sluggish. Thing is, you can still download as fast as before. It's your upload speed that is affected. Every web page you go to, there is an exchange of information in both directions. ISP's sell services such as 512/128 or 768/128 or 1mb/256 or whatever. Point is, the upload speed is always much lower. So when it's being used by an adserver program you don't know about, it can make your whole computer slow, because it is hogging bandwidth between the motherboard and the processor, the memory and the IDE/SATA/SCSI interface as well as upstream bandwidth. If your neighbors complain about pop-ups and you don't have any it is quite possible, however unlikely, that your computer could be the source. The perfect crime, free advertising stored on unsuspecting hard disk drives, and using bandwidth paid for by others. We all shoulder the burden and the spammers get rich. | ||
| Samiam |
Wow Pwnzor I didn't think about that. Pwnzor really is the Pwnzor! Sam | ||
| Pwnzor |
I've made more money killing adware the hard way than I ever did building computers. If there was ever any doubt about who the real Pwnzor is:  (Message edited by pwnzor on July 07, 2006) | ||
| Samiam |
hehe nice. I'll bet you get some comments for that one. BTW this gabbly thing seems a little glitchy, "I" seem to be logging on multiple times, off and on and off...Whatever. Yeah software never really was as strong a suit as hardware is for me. I'll just stick to that mostly. Makes sense for the job I do. Sam | ||
| Pwnzor |
most people don't know what it means. They always ask me, and I just tell them it is directed at a certain audience. I just explain to them it is pronounced "PYOON-ZORE" not "PAWN-ZORE"... 7o7 1 4m t3h 1337 pwnz0r! | ||
| Blake |
Would a complete Norton scan detect the kind of adware you describe? | ||
| Indy_bueller |
Not necessarily Blake, but I have found Microsofts Defender to be pretty handy. I'm sure some may disagree with me on that one, on general principal. | ||
| Ratyson |
Pwnzor, I bet you have had your fun with spy sherif. I would personally like to meet the person involved with creating that piece of crap. When I got hit with it, it took me about 8 hours to get completely back on track. It seems that there are quicker ways to deal with it now though. | ||
| Samiam |
directed at a certain audience Nice way of putting it. | ||
| Blasterd |
I have something on mine right now that I can't get rid of no matter what, except for a re-install and I don't want to do that. Ken | ||
| Buellgirlie |
thanks for the great info! wow. scary  D | ||
| Pwnzor |
Norton and McAfee  Some of the very best things in life are free, and I heartily recommend the following software titles based on years of experience in using them personally and installing them on customer's machines. Firefox Web Browser for WINDOWS Firefox Web Browser for Mac OS/X Firefox Web Browser for LINUX Thunderbird Email Client for WINDOWS Thunderbird Email Client for MAC OS/X Universal Thunderbird Email Client for MAC POWER PC Thunderbird Email Client for LINUX AVG Anti-Virus Guard for WINDOWS AVG Anti-Virus Guard for LINUX ewido Anti-Spyware for WINDOWS Firefox supports all your favorite plugins and will automatically import all your bookmarks and your browsing history from Internet Explorer. It has the best popup controls of any browser I've seen. Also it's very customizable. Thunderbird is a lot like Outlook without the calendar. It also has the distinct advantage of not being the direct target of about 50% of all viruses written. Highly recommended, easily manages as many mailboxes as you like. AVG Anti Virus Guard is just that. Puts a stop to nefarious goings-on within your hard drive. A comprehensive scanner and remover while not being so obtrusive as to slow your system down. No bells and whistles here, just good clean files. Automatically interfaces with all the popular email clients for maximum security in both directions. Installs in just a few minutes and you only have to restart your computer once. FREE AUTOMATIC UPDATES FOR LIFE. ewido Anti-Spyware. This thing finds stuff that so many other programs just can't seem to find, that I use it as my exclusive tool for automated removal. I don't work for Grisoft or Mozilla, or any other software company for that matter. Once again, I endorse these things because I have found them to be the simple solution to many of life's little problems. I have tried so many shareware and public domain software titles over the years and these have risen to the top of the pile. | ||
| G234146 |
Pwnzor: What about Ad-aware SE personal? I use it on my PC and it seems to work well. also free! | ||
| Corporatemonkey |
Big +1 to AVG products. Small, fast, efficient. I uses them on all of my win2003 project boxes... | ||
| Samiam |
Pwnzor, if you don't mind, what's your opinion of Opera? I've switched back and forth between that an Firefox quite a bit in the last few years. Sam | ||
| Pwnzor |
I've not availed myself of the opportunity to personally use opera. I'll review it for you if you like. I'd say as long as it supports all the usual plugins and frames and such then it's great! The main advantage being that it's NOT a Microsoft product. The majority of malicious software these days is written to exploit security "holes" in Microsoft products, primarily Internet Explorer and Outlook or Outlook Express. By eliminating those three, you decrease your exposure to possible infection exponentially. I have heard good things about Opera and Eudora both, but the Mozilla software has always worked so well for me I just stuck with it. ps. hardly anybody ever bothers writing a virus for Mac. The prices on Macs have gotten so competetive that I recommend them to anyone that isn't a gamer. My next office machine will be a Mac. (Message edited by pwnzor on July 08, 2006) | ||
| Pwnzor |
Ad Aware SE never impressed me, I've seen it leave too many stones unturned. I also have it on good authority that they accept money from companies in order to let their software get through while other ads get thrown out. I can't be 100% certain that it's true but Microsoft got caught doing it, I wouldn't put it past a freeware developer. The worst adware is the kind that tricks you with double negatives and redundant wording to get you to agree to install it when you think you are opting out. No adware program will remove it because it is legitimately installed software that doesn't fit the search criteria. This is the kind of stuff that has to be removed manually by using one of several different methods, most involving several hours of trial and error searching. Many times it is this type that will break a user down to the level of re-installing Windows. | ||
| Samiam |
Yeah there's just a couple of quirks I don't like about Firefox. The coolest thing about both browsers is they both support tabbed browsing. I also like the "wand" feature of Opera. Sam | ||
| Pwnzor |
What are the quirks you don't like? I'll submit them to the developers. | ||
| Samiam |
when clicking in the address area, you have to click about 4-5 times to get the cursor there without the whole address selected, ie. if you wanted to make http://www.badweatherbikers.com/buell/messages/32777/211051.html?1152342153 into http://www.badweatherbikers.com without typing the whole thing from scratch. I also didn't like how typing CTRL+N opened up a new window instead of just a tab. But the biggest thing I didn't like was the absence of the ability to save sessions and start from when you left off when you close/restart. Opera has done that very well for quite a while now. My $.02 Sam BTW with the latest release (9.0) they integrated torrent support, but I don't really use it yet since I prefer Azureus | ||
| Pwnzor |
On the contrary, two clicks are all that is required to put the cursor anywhere you like in the address bar. And Ctrl-T opens a new tab. As far as saving sessions I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean having a bunch of tabs open or part way through filling out a form? I believe there are several torrent plugins for firefox. Now you've got my curiosity, I'm gonna download Opera and see what's doing. It appears they have a pda version too, thats a plus. | ||
| Samiam |
the other cool thing was the new tab button that is to the left of all the tabs. Maybe you had better luck with the cursor. I knew about the CTRL-T thing, just didn't use it that much. When you close Opera, then re-open it, it asks you if you wanted to open the same tabs you had when you closed it (same pages and everything) it'll do that. That's one of the biggest things I liked about Opera. It also has a "tabbed" transfers manager, not a separate window for the downloads. Granted there are still a few things I'd like to see changed in Opera, like how it seems to be a memory hog, but I still like it more than Firefox. Sam | ||
| Angelwild327 |
Thanks Pwnzor...I already use Firefox and AVG and have for a couple years...but I just installed EWIDO...very nice appliance. I have to ask..how do the companies/people that offer free tools like these survive? Do they really have that many people that eventually buy? | ||
| Pwnzor |
Well its all based on preference really. Firefox lets you save whole groups of tabs as a single bookmark so you can open them any time you like. I have thousands of multi-tabbed bookmarks, some with over 100 pages open. And I take my bookmarks with me on my pda. A tabbed transfer manager is a good idea, I bet I can tweak Firefox to do that, or if not me I can probably get it done. As far as being a memory hog goes, thats a bad thing for a browser. But then, I suppose it all depends on how much memory you have to start with. If you only have 512mb of memory, a program that takes 50mb is a hog for sure. If you have 4gb it's not so critical any more. Of course there are other factors I won't bore you with. Again it boils down to preference. Sorta like shopping for a laptop. Lots of people buy the one with the most features for the money they spend. Then they start using it and realize they HATE the keyboard. I advise folks to go around to stores and try the keyboards out. Once you find the keyboard you like, search for a laptop you want that has that same keyboard. Transfer that logic to web browsers. If it works well for you, and has the buttons and features you want, then thats the one for you. It's all about the interface at the end of the day. ps I downloaded Opera and I'll review it this week when I have a few hours to spend on it. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Believe it or not, people in this day and age actually donate their time and efforts to good projects like Firefox... for FREE. Many times having your name on a project like this can really embolden a resume'. | ||
| Earwig |
Pwnzor, do you have any problems w/ firefox w/ a memory leak? After running firefox for a while my PC starts to run slow as hell and the memory usage for the firefox.exe process goes up to 250,000 K... I love the browser but man... it gets old having to close it and re-open it every 1/2 hour or so depending on what I'm looking at. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Sounds like you have a piece of malignant software which is using Firefox as its host. I can't diagnose systems from a distance, sorry. I can however tell you that Firefox itself isn't the problem. Something has attached itself to Firefox or has been attached by you unwittingly. Add-on toolbars are a big culprit in this area. I normally do not recommend ANY additional toolbars for ANY web browser. Those toolbars (yes even Yahoo!) are terrible and I won't even begin to list all the reasons. Every feature that is in that toolbar is more than likely already in the browser itself but you may have to click twice to get to it. Unfortunately, when people install "free" software they don't read all the fine print. Very few titles are truly free when you consider that they might be using your browsing data to market to you, or in fact scan your entire hard disk drive to see what games you like or if you're into porno, or whatever. Those are some of the more benign uses for browser toolbars. Your problem sounds a bit deeper than a toolbar issue, but I just threw that out there to give an example of how bad "innocent" software can be. It's a very mild example at that. Generally when I work on someone's computer the first thing I do, provided the computer starts up at all, is attack the system tray. If there are more than 4 or 5 items there, I have to analyze why they are there. All those icons in the lower right corner next to the clock are taking up memory. Your desktop background takes up memory. Your screensaver takes up memory, even when its not running. Just because Windows can run more than one program at a time is no reason to load 15 programs before you even get started.  Here's a clean system tray with everything you need. Anything else is superfluous. From left to right, Volume (muted), NIC Activity Indicator, AVG, ewido, Graphics Card icon, and in this case, a Java icon which turns on and off during use. Notice the absence of a desktop background. Notice the absence of Adobe Download Managers, Quicktime, Realplayer, MusicMatch Jukebox, online photo album icons, HP Printer Managers, etc. New computers come with entirely too much garbage loaded on them. Useless "free" software that is all just an elaborate marketing tool. Computer hardware is a losing proposition when it comes to profit these days, the money is in the software and service sector. They MUST begin selling products to you the minute you walk out the door with the new computer or THEY LOSE. All that junk in the system tray is exactly that, junk. If you boot to a clean Windows desktop, and can keep it clean, you'll never need to re-install Windows unless your hard drive fails completely. Hope this has helped. You're too far away for me to physically look at your machine. |
