19 Sep
2004
19 Sep
'04
7:38 a.m.
If cookies are a worry, do as I do. I run a program called SpyHunter
that runs on boot up every time. It then offers to scan my compiuter
for Spy Ware. Since that takes some time I usualy opt only for a scan
of my cookies. This takes about 2 seconds, no more, and I have a full
report on the cookies. Since I have 17 cookies that are legitimate I
usualy just look at the count. If it hasnt increased I go on. BUT
there is also displayed a list of any dangerous cookies, their
properties and who owns them. If the list is blank then all is well.
If not I stop and delete the offending cookies. The software is FREE.
Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
John Lawson wrote:
What irked me (and still irks me) about your
post, was *not* your
feelings towards my admittedly paranoid view anent intrusions on my
personal computers - no, what pissed me off was that I was ready to
learn from you and honor your knowledge - I was thinking that rather
than engage in jejune absurdities, you'd have taken the time and
space to help me out a bit - show me that perhaps I'm over-reacting -
tell me why I oughta let the little cookies live on my machines.
Ok, ok... In my own defence might I just say that I have spent
roughly a third of my 2-and-a-half weeks holiday clearing up the
devastation that only unpatched Windows 2000 machines can bring, and
was feeling a little sore when I posted.
Instead, you very heavily patronized *myself*
with your adolescent
screed of more-and-more ridiculous questions... "do I remove the
battery at night and re-set the BIOS every morning" indeed!
Don't laugh. I knew someone who did this. Really. They had read in
$pseudotechy_periodical that viruses could live in the NVRAM in your
PCs clock chip. I kid you not.
I have had this IBM Thinkpad for about five
years now, and got it
while I still lived and working in Southern India. I have a firewall,
a virus-checker, a spyware checker, and I disallow active-X, Java,
Flash, Coookies (unless I can't get business done w/out them)etc. To
date I have had one 'infection'; the Welchia Worm. And I got that
during a network setup sesson at my employer's - I had to shutdown my
firewall to synchronize permissions and set up various clients,
someone else on the network was infected and I got it. Noticing that
my port was communicating at nearly it's capacity and my computer was
getting slow, I scnned it and killed the bug. And that has been the
only problem I've had to deal with in five years.
I had a clever-clogs in the office of an Internet service provider I
used to work for disconnect his PC from the LAN and hook up a modem so
he could "send mailshots properly" - he'd taken it upon himself to do
a spot of "advertising" for our company. He was dialled up for around
25 minutes, and his machine was infected with Blaster. This is
despite keeping it up-to-date (there wasn't a patch at this point),
although there was no firewall software on the machine. Not a lot of
point, when you're supposed to be behind a proper firewall, is there?
Thus am I being: Paranoid? Careful? Absurd? You
tell me, Gordon.
Just keep the sarcasm and grandiose flights of superiority to
yourself, please.
Eeeh, ok. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinions. Certainly
people can and do use cookies for identifying repeat visits, for
advertising and the like. You can block these with any Mozilla-based
browser, and someone said (possibly on this list) that IE6 can do it
now too. Since I don't run Windows (never have done, don't intend to)
I can't verify this. Leaving cookies off and only turning them on for
sites that need them seems a bit pointless and inconvenient, but if it
makes you happier then go right ahead.
I have to say, I am somewhat surprised at the number of people who do
use Windows on this list. I would have thought that the various
open-source Unix-alikes would have appealled more. Just don't let the
l337 skript kiddies get any ideas, in case they come up with some
0-day 'sploit for TSS-8!
Gordon.