I just downloaded the free program, ‘Ad aware’ after reading a bit on Internet Eye about the advertisers equivalent of Trojans. I tried Ad-aware and it found 12 items, two were listed as GatorPlugin. log‘s, I have not knowingly downloaded them, most of the items were Gator
Ad Aware deletes them safely as they have entries in the registry. The dates all
preceded the installation of the Norton firewall and it maybe that they could not operate to send back information to Gator once it was in. The free graphics programs I have downloaded have been installed since I have had Norton Firewall and virus scan, prior to that I tended not to download free programs, so I have no reason to believe that was a method of access.
I think it stinks that advertisers are allowed to bug people’s computers to gain
information and it’s time it was made illegal. It is almost certain that they were planted on the computer using some sort of Trojan horse method. I have been talking to UK Trading Standards office to put in an official complaint about Gator particularly, as they were the one that had plugins. I visited Gators site for an e-mail address but you have to email them on the site, as they don’t give one, not surprising of course. I took their postal address and shall be writing to them to ask for an explanation of the purpose of their files on my computer and why they are infringing my privacy rights by placing them without my knowledge of them being there.
I think the only way this sort of practice will be eradicated is by people getting on the backs of these sort of companys, we just have no way of knowing what information is extracted from computers by these methods, presuming that the plugin logs are information gatherers. Certainly Norton utilities listed all plugins even those that were onboard before it was installed, it obviously was unable to detect the Gator ones as they were not listed, that certainly suggests they are designed to be undetected. It’s good that companys like Lavasoft are combating thse nasty practices and giving free software to do it.
Ad aware for anybody interested is, http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Dave
i hate Gator bonzi buddy has it in there downloads allso.
i think there should be a law about this crap.
I’ve had Gator “Spyware” on my computer too. It took me a long time to find and remove (manually) all of it. I don’t like that kind of software, but the fact is that stopping it would be very hard to do. Thanks for the AdAware link DM! I’ll have to give it a try. 
Hey DM, you might want to check out www.grc.com also, test your shields and ports by clicking on “Shields up” or click this link Lots of good info here!
E
Thanks Evoken, I have had a look at the link’s and there is a lot of useful info there. 
Dave
First, let me thank DM for posting this link. Ad Aware has gotten rid of about 11 different things that don’t belong on my computer. The only thing is, I still get emails from girls wanting to show me their you-know-whats. “Hi, this is Becky. I missed you at Lori’s party last night. Here are some pictures of what you missed.” etc. I never asked for these junk mails and don’t know how to stop them. I get about 5 a day, both on my regular email and on AOL. Anyone know a good way to stop these?
Hey Slosh . . .
There’s a program you can get called MailWasher which is freeware, and allows you to view your mails before you download them, and to bounce them back, delete them or whatever.
mailwasher
I think it helps to not have an email address with one of the more common sites. Places like Hotmail and AOL, for example. I’ve had an account from a medium-sized 3D site for a while now, and have not had even a single email which I did not ask for!
Over the last weekend I have just learned that the firewall does not stop Gator intruding and it must have been pure coincidence that my original Gator files preceded the installation of the firewall. I had been searching the net when a popup ad caused a crash when I tried to click it off; I unfortunately don’t remember what the ad was. When I came off the net I ran an Ad-aware scan and found that Gator plugins and relevant files were once again planted on my computer, I deleted them with Ad-aware as I had done before. At no time was there any suggestion whilst on the net that a Gator download was taking place and I am suspicious that the popup that caused the crash may have been the source. I was wrong about Gator not having an e-mail address on its site, it is on their page ’About’ and not on the page ‘Contact us’ as I had expected it to be
As of yet I haven’t written to Gator as I am awaiting results of enquiries through government offices regarding this sort of intrusion onto people’s computers. If anybody has any information on any USA trading standards control body or anything similar I would be grateful for an address. Does the USA have any data protection laws as we do in the UK, if so I feel companies like Gator would be infringing these rules by acquiring data from plugin logs without the knowledge of the person whose computer it was being extracted from.
I must admit Slosh, I seem to have been lucky on BT Internet as far as unwanted e-mails go and don’t generally get any, friends on other servers have complained about the problem so I am not sure why it differs
At the weekend I picked up another small free program, ‘Spysites’ that is a database of 1,584 spyware sites and you can transfer any or all of them into the Internet Explorers restricted zone, Gator has more than one address. When clicking on the addresses in ’Spysites’ it tells you what they do. A lot just use tracking cookies to follow you around all the sites you visit, the worst try to download Gator, Bonzi Buddy etc onto your computer. I have blocked a lot of cookies now and just allow those that are strictly the site owner’s cookies on trusted sites the rest I use prompt for, it saves a lot of cleaning up later. Ad-aware is a must for anybody who doesn’t want spyware on their computer, even if just for the reason that these plugins could cause crashes by conflicting with other programs.
Thanks Kruzr and Nightraven for the added links.
Dave
Interesting post, DM. I shall have to download AdAware and give it a run on my PC.
I too get a lot of junk email. Worst of the lot is a flood of stuff (about 8 a day) from Korean sites - not porn sites (mostly): electronic equipment, ISPs, finance, food and clothing mail order stores etc. The biggets joke is that I can only tell this from the banner images, as they’re all in Korean, which might as well be Martian to me. The other thing increasing in frequency is a selection of bogus scams from total strangers, usually from African or South American countries, who want to make me a millionaire by participating in money laundering. (Sorry guys - I’ve seen the TV documentaries, have discussed it with CID fraud investigators, and am anyway not that damn stupid.)
I’ve been using Mail Washer for a few months now and can certainly recommend it. If you go to download, you can get either the latest “stable” version or the current “beta”. I chose the latter and have had no problems with it. It’s very handy for quickly blacklisting and/or deleting unwanted mail, or previewing suspect messages without wasting time downloading them to your PC (further reducing the risk of virus infection). As I discovered last week, also very convenient when a user group goes haywire and floods your mailbox with multiple copies of the same post.
Something else I’ve noticed over the last month or so is a considerable increase in the nunmber of port scan attacks intercepted by my firewall. Used to be one every 3 months or so. Lately I get them every few days, often with a series of them every 10 minutes or so almost immediately after loggin on starting I’m while checking my email. As a user of a dial-up connection and therefore temporary address, I’d always imagined myself to be fairly unlikely to get many such attacks.
Just to say thanks again for the tip DM. I downloaded AdAware and ran it this morning. It found 26 suspect registry entries, 4 folders and 10 files of spyware. These included two registry entries left over from my clearing up of a mild Trojan attack a few weeks ago.
I’m pleased Ad-aware proved useful Flycatcher, for both yourself and Slosh. As the enquiries I have made through relevant government offices are taking the length of time you would expect them to take, I tackled Gator Corporation myself by email. They responded and were not readily prepared to accept that I could have Gator files on my computer unless I had downloaded a free program containing their files. I pointed out that I had checked my computer on the day their last files appeared just prior to going on the web and it was clear, then checked again when I disconnected and found their files had downloaded again, possibly having caused the crash that had occurred. They sent me a list of free programs available that contained their files, asking which I had on my computer, I went back again and pointed out that I had none of the programs, nor had I ever had any of them.
Their next excuse was that my Internet security settings must be too low and that ActiveX must be automatically downloading to my computer. I replied that my settings for ActiveX are at prompt and I had no prompts on their file downloads or in fact any indication whatsoever that a Gator download was occurring. The last email asked me to send them the files if it should happen again, so they could try to decide what was happening, they must be the only ones that don’t know. I asked them more than once to explain to me what the Gator files I had found on my computer related to in relation to any program of their’s, they just continually ignored that question. I tackled Gator because in my case they have been the biggest problem, but there are certainly many others.
Dave
I’m not a lawyer but I would think that secret installation of software without notification or approval might be covered by some kind of intrusion or vandalism laws, especially as a material change (magnetic encoding on the hard drive) has occurred
I agree!
Since my first ‘power on’ back in 1999, 114 components were placed on my computer.
Thank you DM for this enlightening post.
I was going to work on a halloween image this weekend but now I m going to do alittle more research into stuff like this.
Once again, thank you so much!
My experience closely mirrors yours, DM. Only one of the files (Comet Cursor) was downloaded with a free program I had actually installed (a chess game), and that without my knowledge. I have had this one pop up on numerous occasions, but have always said no. The biggest offender in my case however was Aureate, accounting for over 90% of the components found.
I also have my Active X setting at prompt, and have never yet permitted one to proceed, so Gator raising that as the loophole is pure BS.
Good luck with your campaign against this scumware.
Thankyou Dave for informing us of the adware. I downloaded the program from your link a couple of days ago. When I ran it I was shocked that it detected 86 files of adware on my pc.
I’ve really been ‘Ad’. 
I think it was mainly due to a recent full installation of Kazaar and not unchecking the promotional sofware components (pesky younger bruvs fault)
I’m running the program daily, but still can’t get rid of a persistant Aureate registry link. :mad:
Well I’m glad a few more people are getting rid of these advertising hijackers, just this week I read in an internet magazine a letter from someone trying to get rid of Gator files and getting a cannot delete message. The magazine explained that these spyware program’s are running all the time, so when you start up the computer they start with your other start-up programs and said to delete them they would have to stop them running. They then went on to say the best solution was to get Ad-aware as that would deal with them, so maybe Ad-aware stops them running.
On your problem with Aureate registry key Grub, perhaps it might be worthwhile to go to the Lavasoft/Ad-aware site and put a question on their forum about this one sticking item, they may be able to solve it.
Dave
Hello Zbrusher of Horse Trojan
Cheval de Troie in french
You don’t think that this marvelous programm who detect invasion is not also a very perfidious Trojan himself ?
You are very trustful and guileless !
We are dancing on the volcano
Pilou the paranoiac
When dancing on a volcano Frenchy, it always pays to have flame proof shoes. 
Dave