Plugging the holes in XP and Explorer

How to block popup adverts

A growing problem with browsing the internet is how other companies steal your bandwidth and time with popup adverts and spyware. These can slow down your connection and compromise your privacy.

My son's PC ran slowly and frequently had problems with viruses the answer was threefold.

1. Run Spybot Seek and Destroy - Freeware

2. Update Anti virus and add a firewall

3. Install Microsoft Windows Update

Problem:

What is Spyware?

In Simple terms, spyware is software that transmits personally identifiable information to others on the internet without your specific knowledge.

Spyware is typically not the product you install itself, but small add-ons, that you may or may not disable during install. In most cases, the EULA somewhere has a few lines telling you about privacy matters, but typically this information is in small print and you never know how the spyware get's on your system.

A less threatening sort is adware. Adware is similar to spyware, but does not transmit personally identifiable information, or at least the collector promises not to sell it. Instead, aggregated usage information is collected.

Adware is also often a side-effect of spyware, as both monitor you for a sole purpose – delivering you advertisement that is especially tailored to your habits.

Another kind that is detected under the spyware category are tracking cookies. Cookies are used all over the internet in useful and less useful places. Advertisement companies often set cookies whenever your browser loads a banner from them. In that case and if that cookie contains a GUID, the company gets notice about every site you visit that contains their ads.

Fix:

Spybot Search and Destroy

There are many programs that can protect you. I used a freeware program called Spybot Search and Destroy. This improved the performance of what seemed to be a flagging system into the more athletic PC it was when first purchased.

Gone where all the annoying pop up adverts and my internet access speed was back to normal.

I personally recommend it purely as something I found very useful and don't make any warranty as to it's operation. It has been featured on PCW magazine and various other magazine CDs.

To visit the site to read more about this and rid yourself of popup ads click here.

This contains Windows XP Service Pack 1, security updates and updates to the Windows Media Player.

Installing the security updates from CD is far preferable to downloading these large files from the Microsoft website. This also helps plug holes that allow others to access your PC or infect the PC with a virus.

How to obtain and use the Windows Security Update CD (February 2004)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;833242

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/security/protect/

I hope you find this personal advice useful and will help you get the best out of your PC.

All the best,

Nigel Bayley