I've been infected with smut!

Ok, so just about every time I look at my monitor there is a new wonderful popup, advertising some sort of barely legal sex fest. My girlfriend isn't really a big fan of this.

I swear all I did was go to an innocent site that linked to some xxx page that has taken over my computer. I've deleted all the cache files and cookies from IE and run Ad-aware about 7 times. Just when I think that everything is gone, I turn around and there is another popup.

What I want is a solution that wipes out all this crap, without having to go as far as format or something. I don't know if a popup killer program is something that would work as a permanent solution. By the way I'm running 98 SE

thanks for any input.

dumb question... but did you restart the PC? Sometime they'll hide an IE window that can keep spawning new windows...

Try Spybot. It catching things that Ad-Aware misses for me.

I assume you've rebooted.

Oh, and your avatar seems to be on some SSL site signed by a certificate not issued by a well known CA. It's kind of annoying for it to ask me if I trust the site when I view the post.

Speaking of annoying popups, can you get rid of whatever is redirecting your avatar image to an HTTPS server with a self-signed certificate?

can you get rid of whatever is redirecting your avatar image to an HTTPS server with a self-signed certificate?

Ditto.

Hey, maybe that's what's causing all his smut popups.

Try Spybot Search & Destroy. An office machine had a few things AdAware couldn't clean. The combination of Spybot and AdAware worked great though.

sorry about the avatar, i'll put in on the board in that thread

Yes I've rebooted, several times. I'll try Spybot and see what happens.

I'd also look into (if you haven't already) a good virus scanning package & up to date virus definition files. Preferably one with internet/download scanning that runs by default.

-Zeke

try turning off javascript. here's a site that will tell you how to do it. not only will you wont have any smut ads but you will have no more annoying pop up ads for anything.

although this method will sometimes not make some sites work properly because it requires javascript. all you have to do is add it to your trusted zone and reload. then you can properly view the site. check it out. i highly recommend it for your surfing pleasure. say goodbye to no more pop ups!

http://j-walk.com/blog/archives/030421.htm#24-14

by the way, this blog, j-walk blog is a great wacky daily blog. check it out.

I use webwasher to filter things like popups and scripts. It's easy to toggle on and off too.

ok, I've now done the Spybot Search and Destroy and my system has slowed down to a crawl. You would think that getting rid of all the bad stuff would make a computer run faster, but now I can barely use the damn thing.

stupid computer

I HAD the same problem... I leave my computer logged on 24/7, and when I'd come in over the week-end there'd be ~200 popups on the screen. Really irritating. Spybot cleared it up for me.

Don't forget to update your Ad-aware reference file, too! They usually have an update every few months. I find that if Ad-aware has missed something that updating the ref file usually takes care of it.

- trs

ok, now i'm getting really pissed off. I've done everything that i'm supposed to. It seems as though my computer is now slower AND many times when I open a new browser (IE) window, there is a popup for porn that comes up right after it. I guess I'll try running all this stuff a few more times after rebooting each time.

stupid crap.

There is an option to run spybot when you first boot before anything else gets loaded. Maybe try that? I can't remeber how I was able to induce that feature though.

I had a weird problem where I was getting redirected to porn sites or sometimes even my empeg(?!) when I'd just open up a normal site like cnn.com. The cnn.com or whatever wouldn't load, it was like something took over my DNS and was sending me to whatever it wanted to regardless of what I requested. This was on the same machine that died so I never found a fix for it.

I can't remeber how I was able to induce that feature though.

It's one of the check boxes in the settings area.


or you can select the box below it to just run it once.

it was like something took over my DNS

Hmmm. Maybe you should check your (you said Win98, right?) c:\windows\hosts and see if there's anything that looks odd in there.

I seem to remember there was some spyware a while back that installed itself into your TCP/IP stack. If you didn't remove it properly then it would break internet access because you'd deleted the networking component. Something like this could have been installed I guess

- Trevor

Not to be counter-constructive but:

Just use Netscape 4.79. You'll be amazed at how tame that makes the internet.

And it couldn't hurt to use Win2k too.

Thanks Bitt, I'm running WinXP (ithoughti is running Win98) but I'll look for a similar folder if that happens to me again.

I 2nd the notion to replace Win98SE w. Win2K.

Actually, I responded to your post, but I was directing my comments at ithoughti/matt.

but I was directing my comments at ithoughti/matt.

... who still needs to fix his avatar.

He has. There's no way to change where old posts' avatars point, unfortunately.

Ah.. Yes. Good point.

[Homer] Stupid BBS software. [/Homer]

I've always wondered why avatars didn't change. I thought the software was pulling each avatar off the page it was hosted on every time it showed up. If it doesn't, then is every avatar being stored on the host server? If so, then is it also saving each use of the avatar seperately?

The BBS software only contains an image link to the URL you specify in your settings. It puts such a link in for each post. If you change your avatar link, the new setting is not retroactively applied to your old posts.

The two different paradigms are:

• You change the URL in your settings
  All your old posts point to the old avatar; all your new posts point to the new one
  
  
• You change the image located where your URL points
  The images on all your posts, old and new, change.

Got it... thanks... another bothersome question answered.

c:\windows\hosts...

seems that directory isn't there.

Another question: Do Ad-aware and Spybot run in the background all the time? Because that would explain why my computer has slowed down quite a bit.

Do Ad-aware and Spybot run in the background

No.

c:\windows\hosts

seems that directory isn't there.

"hosts" is not a directory, it's a file. It has no extension. And it's only c:\windows\hosts on Win95 and Win98. On NT-based operating systems, it's in a much deeper directory which I always forget and have to go digging for each time I need to look at it.

On NT-based operating systems, it's in a much deeper directory which I always forget

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\ or
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\

/Michael

I took a look at the "hosts" file. Nothing unusual.

hmmmph.

It was a while back, but I had a similar problem (hell, I'd get bored and WOULD surf porn, I admit it - though not accusing you of it ). I tried my best to completely uninstall the Internet Explorer program, then did the update from the M.S. website. Pretty sure this solved it for me. That was on a 98 setup too.

Backup your favorites folder, and there shouldn't be any danger of this. IE is pretty imbedded in Windows overall, but I think you can go through the start - settings - control panel - add/remove programs and still get some of it. May also try internet options - security tab - security level. Crank it up and see if that hits it.

Sorry for the guessing, but I know I solved a similar problem on a '98 machine of mine, quite a while ago where I didn't have much knowledge other than clicking and unclicking checkboxes, and I think that or the re-install of just IE was enough to fix it.

As a though, I think the popup killer would work, but it would be just a band-aid, not really solve the problem. They are good tools, but not for repairing something like you've got.

Damn, one more thought - make sure your homepage is set correctly, as a straight http address, and not somehow a link to your old homepage routed through a smut server?

And another - From start - run type msconfig (you probably know all about this). Check under the startup tab and see if there's anything you don't recognize. Ditto for the startup portion of the registry if you're brave, or at least more talented than I am.

To ensure the removal of cruft, I rebuild all my boxes running any MS OS at least quarterly. Each time I save on CD all apps that I used for the build, rather than just popping everything back on - so I get a nice minimal build.

Talk about Equal Rights
I am sorry about this, I just can't believe it, I had no idea this was possible, not in any smutty way I hope, well I mean I am trying not to put this in the subject of "Being infected by Smut", but it's just the most incredible thing I have seen all week, it's your fault as after surfing a link off that Blogg Archives page you guy's gave me I came across this.

http://www.travelmateinfo.com/page002.html

http://www.restrooms.org/standing.html

I am speechless
So I guess if you think you see a woman going in the wrong door in the future don't be surprised. Actually I wonder if women might start demanding changes in the bathroom furnishings. Actually that link to how to use IE 5 Power Tweaks to disable Javascript Popups was very cool.

Gazz.

WTF

thanks for the informative post.