[vox] Sneaky Spyware

[Richard Crawford]

On my WinXP laptop, I have the following:

Spybot S&D
LavaSoft AdAware SE

I almost always browse the Web with Firefox 1.0.7 (1.5 now), except for the 
very, very rare times when I come to a website that requires IE.  Even then, 
I have IE (version 6) tightened up as much as I can, I run everything through 
two up-to-date firewalls (my ZoneAlarm firewall, and my Linksys firewall).  I 
never visit pornography, I never use any chat software other than GAIM, and I 
never go to IRC chatrooms.  My installation of Thunderbird is very good at 
eliminating spam and viruses.


Still, when I ran Spybot S&D the other day, it found that the Coulomb Dialer 
malware had been installed on my computer somehow.  Mind you, I very rarely 
actually boot into Windows on this machine; I almost always run Linux.

So, given all that...  How could the Coloumb Dialer have been installed on my 
computer?  Thankfully, Spybot S&D tagged it and removed it, but I'm still 
paranoid at this point as to how this might have happened.


-- 
Richard S. Crawford
http://www.mossroot.com
AIM:  Buffalo2K    Yahoo: rscrawford
"Whatever does not kill me makes me stranger."
--Llewellyn

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