I had a big problem with spyware awhile back... to this day I don't know how
it got on my PC. I work for a Huge national ISP in tech support, and see
spyware problems every day. I had been able to steer clear of it, and
considered people who actually got spyware to be doing so out of
ignorance.... Well, I got humbled.

It started installing itself one day, and I installed Spybot AND Adaware to
get rid of it.... but it kept coming back. I worked for many hours to try and
get rid of it... but it kept downloading more, and more spyware... I finally
found that one called TVMedia was the one that spybot could never remove
because it was always "in use"... yet it didn't show in the task list in 2k.

So, I got the kill.exe file from the support tools, and had to do a kill -f
on it. That closed it to where I could delete the exe file. Just to make
sure, I also set my run keys in the registry to read only, and left the
spyware folders there, and set them to read only as well. Haven't had a
problem since... I believe I also added the key for BHOs in IE to read only
as well. I'll just have to remember where it is in there next time I need to
install a plugin so I can temporarily turn on write access.

What would really be a big help would be the ability to turn off certain
terrible features in IE... It would eliminate a lot of annoyances... For
instance... to be able to disable the javascript event that fires when you
close a window. That would keep them from immediately reopening another page
on close. Disabling the ability to change the homepage using page code would
be nice.

Another huge problem is when spyware replaces the Winsock files with their
own versions... Then, of course, spyware removal tools remove those files and
totally break the internet connection (if the spyware itself doesn't do that
first). We get sooo many calls/day about connections broken due to this.

Anyway, there ends my story/rant.