The _real_ reason Dell won't help remove spyware:

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

This might be old news for some, but it was just mentioned on El Reg again...

From MSNBC, regarding N-Case:
"In September, consumers nudged toward Dell.com by n-CASE purchased nearly $4 million worth of computers, Smith said, netting 180Solutions over $100,000 in finder’s fees. A spokeswoman from Dell said the company does not discuss its marketing deals publicly."

'Nudged' is an interesting way to spin it. N-Case (with close to 13 Million users suckers) is infamous for popping up "sponsored content" over competitors' sites. I don't think Dell would want to get rid of spyware if it can redirect their new customers away from those awful places like gateway.com and hp.com

And as for why MS has made no real effort towards blocking browser-hijackers and the like, regarding Gator:
"Expedia.com is the largest buyer, spending “hundreds of thousands” on Gator ads each month. An Expedia representative said the company wouldn’t discuss its marketing strategy."

Who owns most of Expedia? One guess.


OBHijackers: I just tried to google and got some pop-up spawning fake page at justtemplates.com. It claims 'one of our server I.P. addresses has been targeted by a virus which you may have on your computer called "QHosts"' Somehow I don't think so. I'm on a Mac. If I option-refresh I get Google. Maybe I should let IT know their caching engine has been poisoned.

Comments

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

being a mac user i dont think that spybot will help you much, but the opera browsers is one of the most pop and spyware resistant browsers to date. i would suggest checking it out, and it is about as fully cross platform as it gets. www.opera.com

Not my problem.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

The issue isn't my browser, it's the transproxy the campus uses.

Apparently someone else's qhosted machine caused it to cache bad data for google.com and some other common sites.

Now it's handing out the hijacked pages to the whole LAN.

Re: Not my problem.

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

ahh i see... thats actually cute. but my main thing opera has built in pop up killing, so it still can help. but yeah time to notify the admins

[japester.livejournal.com]

er.... mozilla, camino, safari all block popups too.

where have you been for the last year?

I used to use opera back when it was the only browser that supported tabs, now it's a PITA compared to safari and camino.

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

hehe... safari runs only on mac. and being that comino is also only under mac. and i dont have a mac. and if i did have one well id have to have the money to afford one. mozilla is good i just like opera better.

[japester.livejournal.com]

er.... mozilla, camino, safari, firebird, they all block popups too.

where have you been for the last year?

I used to use opera back when it was the only browser that supported tabs, now it's a PITA compared to safari and camino.

[liquidmercurial.livejournal.com]

Freakin' NCase Interstitial Ad Deliver and Pad Lookups is the bane of my existence... You know HOW MANY TIMES we have had to remove that on a customer's computer because it was causing connectivity problems. Luckily I came across this link for alternative removal: N Case Removal (http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/nCase.html) (link opens in a new window)