Scan and destroy: learn it, live it, love it.

Yeah, I was still having some crap pop up on my computer - nothing too heinous (I thought I'd removed it all but I'd now and then get a pop-up. Like I was reading an online forum where they were facetiously discussing the Snuggie, and I got a pop-up ad purporting to be from the seller of the Snuggie.) And the browser was running slow.

(Seriously: does this happen to everyone or is my internet connection just a slut? 'Cos it seems to pick up an awful lot of "social diseases." And I even try to limit where it goes and who it goes with. Maybe they need to make a firewall program called "Chastity Belt.")

So I groaned and did the download-updates for MalwareBytes anti-malware program, and Spytbot search and destroy. Together they found a lot of crap, all of which I removed. (I think Malware finally zapped the pop-up generator).

Spybot Search and Destroy is a seriously awesome program. I just feel like I have to say that right here.

On the one hand, I feel kind of like I kicked a bunch of ass tonight. On the other hand, it ticks me off that I even am having to do this. (And I've also changed my WOT settings to block "suspicious" sites. I had to monkey with them a little because the most restrictive setting actually blocks this blog - I presume because there's no "trusted vendor" certificate or somesuch attached, but that's OK that I turned that part off, I only shop at sites I KNOW and have verified on my own are safe. But hopefully sites that load malware will still be blocked.)

I guess I'm going to have to do this at least once a week (even with WOT, I can see stuff could get in - just this evening, McAfee kept announcing that it had blocked a bunch of trojans. I don't know if this is related to that Fick-whatever worm (I can never remember the actual name) taking over people's computers and sending out instructions to try to invade other computers or not. Or maybe my ISP is just being really lax, I don't know, but it seems I've had a lot more trouble lately.)