Technology Tip of the Week - July 24, 2007

Interpreting Spyware Results

Last week we looked at installing Spybot and running your first scan to detect spyware and adware on your computer. This week we'll look at understanding your scan results. Once your scan is completed you could just proceed to remove the results. Instead it is recommended that you first have a look at everything that Spybot-Search & Destroy detected. The first thing you should know is to distinguish between the red entries, which represent spyware and similar threats, and the green entries, which are usage tracks. (Note: Usage tracks are your fingerprints in your system. Whenever you visit a page with your browser, or just open any file, that information is stored deep inside Windows. In most cases that is very useful – if you want to open that file again, you can select it from a list instead of typing the whole filename or browsing the whole directory structure again. However in some cases you may want to hide your activity, because spyware and Internet attackers may use that information. Spybot-Search&Destroy can remove some of the most important and common tracks on your system.)

For the usage tracks, removal is non-critical, but depends on your personal preferences.

Ignoring the usage tracks for now, let's focus on the red entries which represent the real threats. Although  Spybot has chosen the targets using strict criteria, you can check for yourself if you click on each product and read the product information that will be shown in a pop-up window.

Decision on exceptions

All problems displayed in red are regarded as real threats and should be dealt with. But after you read the product description, you may still decide to keep a threat, or just a usage track. Maybe you don't want your list of most recently used Word documents removed? At this point you have three options.

Removing Threats

Once you have a better understanding about everything you've found, go ahead and use the Fix selected problems button.

Once you start thinking about removing the usage tracks, too, you may think that checking all the green entries is hard work. This is for a simple reason - to force you to look at the results. Once you know what you are dealing with, there is a hidden Select all button available for you. To enable the Select all button:

  1. Click on Settings
  2. Choose Settings
  3. Select Expert settings
  4. Click in the boxes next to Show expert buttons in results list and Show expert buttons in recovery list. The Select all buttons will automatically appear the next time you scan.

For more information on Spybot please see their website at: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html. For more information on spyware in general please see the CCRI Spyware FAQs at: http://it.ccri.edu/helpdesk/spyware-faqs.shtml.

For more help with this feature, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentor Kathy Beauchene.

Website of the Week

MIT Open Courseware Initiative

In 1999, MIT Provost Robert A. Brown asked a committee of MIT faculty, students, and administrators to provide strategic guidance on how MIT should position itself in the distance/e-learning environment. The resulting recommendation was the MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) initiative.

Today, MIT's OCW is a large-scale, Web-based publication of the educational materials from the MIT faculty's courses. This unique initiative enables the open sharing of the MIT faculty's teaching materials with educators, enrolled students, and self-learners around the world. MIT OCW provides users with open access to the syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists, even a selection of video lectures, from 1550 MIT courses representing 34 departments and all five of MIT's schools. The initiative will include materials from virtually all courses by the year 2008. Browse through this rich content (including audio and video) to find learning objects to enhance your courses at:  http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm

Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this article in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.
 

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