Anti-spyware for Firefox? Is there?
 

You know, most of the anti spayware are for the cookies generated by IE... is there a program that also works for FireFox?

SpybotSD catches Firefox cookies.
Ad-aware might. I forget.

Cool.... I try Spybot :)

Spyware in Firefox?! Never heard of such a thing. :P

But honestly, I have yet to recieve any kind of spyware in Firefox as of yet.

spywareblaster prevents firefox nasties. rather than getting rid of them after their on your pc.

Tracking cookies are often thought of as spyware, probably what's meant.

Spywareblaster adds about 200 sites to the cookie exceptions in Firefox (that's all it does for FF), you may also be able to get that list elsewhere.

spywareblaster? That's new to me... also I'm going to try it... thanks :)

get the cookie culler extension

get adblock

I'm using adaware and spybot at the moment, has anyone found some more powerful alternatives?

no

(at least not until MS Antispyware stops producing so many false positives)

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't spywareblaster work by blocking malicious activeX controls? What can that do for FF?

Spywareblaster does 3 things:
1) Blocks known malicious ActiveX/BHO's/sites in Internet Explorer
2) Blocks known spyware/tracking cookies by adding said sites to the IE Restricted Zone
3) Adds the same list of bad sites to the Cookies Exception List in Firefox

After installing it, make sure you get the latest internal updates, then just click "Enable All Protection", and you're done. Though make sure you check for updates regularly, at least once a week.


Another alternative is to use a custom Hosts file.
I was using the one from here, but I was having a few problems accessing some sites (not sure why). The list of blocked sites is so huge that I couldn't be arsed checking it manually and removing any from the list, so I ended up creating my own small custom Hosts file, just to block ads on the sites that I visit the most.

Basically, it works by telling the dns lookup that the ip for a bad site is the localhost, and therefore the pages/ads don't even load.


Re: Anti Spyware/Adware programs

The combination of Spybot SD, Ad-Aware SE, SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard is still recommended, though more and more security sites are now recommending MS AntiSpyware (Win2k/XP/2003 only) as well.

I've got them all installed, hehe.
Though I've noticed that SpywareGuard seems to be dormant since installing MS-AS, probably because MS-AS takes precedence and overrides SG. So SpywareGuard probably isn't required any more if you install MS-AS.

As gaekwad2 says, MS-AS is still in beta, so it may produce some false-positives. However, it always asks if you want to allow a potentially harmful script/activex/bho/startup/etc first, so if you know for sure that it's safe, then you just say "yes". Otherwise, always say "no" to block them permanently. And if it does pick up any legitimate software during the scan, you can always restore them from Quarantine afterwards, heh.

The only recommended commercial antispyware program is PestPatrol (though it's not required if you've got all the free ones).

SpySweeper is badly overrated and Spyware Doctor is a pretty poor performer, impo.

All the rest are a waste of money, and some actually cause more problems than they fix.

And, of course, a real-time AntiVirus and Firewall is absolutely essential these days. Though it's as equally important to make sure you've got all Critical Updates installed from WindowsUpdate, because it's these vulnerabilities that are exploited by most trojans/worms/hijackers.

The thing is, even if you only ever use Firefox (or other alternate browser), the whole system can still be vulnerable to infection, just by installing one dodgy p.o.s. software (eg. any so called free: screensaver, online game, p2p, etc) or by clicking a bad link in any email/im/irc app, etc. It only takes one trojan downloader to get onto the system, especially one which bypasses/overrides firewalls, and before you know it the whole system can get bogged down with a whole variety of crap. Remember that IE is integrated into Windows, so if IE gets hijacked, so does your entire system.

I should know... I've spent the past few months helping out at TSG Security forum, and many of the hundreds of cases we get there are totally horrendous. Some of the infections we come across (Bube.d, VX2/L2M, Vundo.b, Qoologic, CWS, Spywad/Slimshield, Agent CX, Smitfraud, Peper, etc) cannot be fixed by using any of the aforementioned programs, and require special tools and specific procedure to fix. Yup, it's pretty scary.
http://forums.techguy.org/t345137.html
http://forums.techguy.org/t357792.html

That site comes up a lot when researching HJT logs. I never knew what to make of it. Now I suppose I have a new friendly site. :)

I spend time over at spywareinfo. Some of those people, you just want to smack for how they got infected in the first place. (Man I wish more people would read that post ;))

So remember kids... this could be you!
http://forums.techguy.org/t358778.html

:eek:


[EDIT] Oh well... looks like I killed yet another thread, heh :-(

i use spysweeper on my pc at home, but at school i download and run microsoft anti-spyware.

Why would we worry if we got you on the forums? :p ;)

But damn, that guy has a lot of obscure startup items :eek:
He didn't reply back yet...

Ad-aware is very goodi believe it does everything

None of them 'does everything'.

Well this combines everything (at least most anti-spyware I know). The installer is in dutch though...

Yup, that one gets good reviews. Too bad they didn't make an english version...

[edit]
I just read they are working on it...
For now you can use this manual if you want to try it. A bit messy, but it's something...
Hitmanpro combines a lot of spyware/adware/malware removers. A list of some of the used programs can be found on the site michgelsen linked to.