Adware (Warning: this thread contains techno-shite)

6 Aug 2004

My Norton AV tells me I have something called "Bargain Buddy" on my system, which apparently puts adverts on my browser. It won't delete it and says the program is embedded in some other, legitimate piece of software, but doesn't tell me which piece of software it's hiding in.
Does anyone know A) how I get rid of it, and B) how I stop it getting in again?
Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated.
Ice

6 Aug 2004

Have you done a google search for it? This is one of the first sites that cropped up when I did, there are several others....

Good luck,
Mike.

6 Aug 2004

Ice,
See this site:

6 Aug 2004

Ice, you see (above) how we're tumbling over each other to help.... lol

Mike.

6 Aug 2004

Note the times are the same...

6 Aug 2004

Sheesh you guys!
It's not a competition, ya know.

6 Aug 2004

Tuts... (tm Neil)
Women! wink

6 Aug 2004

Thanks for link guys. The dll wasn't where it was supposed to be, it was in a zip file. I've dumped the zip file and rescanned and it still flags up Bargain Buddy, but there is no Bargain Buddy folder anywhere on the HD and no .dll of the name referred to.
I assume it doesn't work anyway because I don't actually get any popup ads, I just like a clean hard drive. As they say on the trouble card: "Further Investigation Required" biggrin

6 Aug 2004

Do you have Net2phone?

6 Aug 2004

Could possibly be detecting the file in the recycle bin, not sure if Norton does that or not or it might be flagging registry entries. Try adaware or spybot to locate the left over components..

6 Aug 2004

Quote by JQL
Do you have Net2phone?

No, but the site also mentioned MP tools so binned all of those and rescanned - same result.

6 Aug 2004

Quote by sussexguy
Could possibly be detecting the file in the recycle bin, not sure if Norton does that or not or it might be flagging registry entries. Try adaware or spybot to locate the left over components..

Spybot didn't find anything, but DID add some spyware of its own! rolleyes

6 Aug 2004

Ice.
Try running Ad-aware from Lavasoft, you can download it from the net for free. I had a similar problem with a browser hijacker. Nothing would shift it, not even Spybot, but Ad-aware quashed the bastard! However, Spybot picks up other stuff as well so I still run that as well as Ad-aware. I run them all the time.
Good luck!

6 Aug 2004

Quote by Ice Pie
Spybot didn't find anything, but DID add some spyware of its own!

I've never has any problems with Spybot. What spyware has it downloaded? How can you tell this?
Incidently you may get a message regarding DSO Exploit. Everyone gets that and you can't get rid of it! It's a hole in Windows IE that they refuse to fix! Why, I don't know?
LC

6 Aug 2004

Quote by Lovecommando
Ice.
Try running Ad-aware from Lavasoft, you can download it from the net for free. I had a similar problem with a browser hijacker. Nothing would shift it, not even Spybot, but Ad-aware quashed the bastard! However, Spybot picks up other stuff as well so I still run that as well as Ad-aware. I run them all the time.
Good luck!

Cheers LC, I'll have a go at that tomorrow biggrin

6 Aug 2004

Quote by Ice Pie
Could possibly be detecting the file in the recycle bin, not sure if Norton does that or not or it might be flagging registry entries. Try adaware or spybot to locate the left over components..

Spybot didn't find anything, but DID add some spyware of its own! rolleyes

Spybot doesn't contain spyware ......unless you got it from an unofficial site. What might be happening is that it changes some registry entries in order to detect browser hijacks which I know is picked up by adaware as possible spyware, don't know if norton does too.
Could also try HijackThis, although use with caution.

6 Aug 2004

Another good pice of free software to have on your machine is "winpatrol".

it does quite a lot. Checks what is in your machines start up (and asks you to authorise changes) checks your cookies, active programs, and more.
Rgds
Ian_Mids
(also a user of adaware)