Hey, your bank accounts in Tex a**

[Press any key]

Quote my Aunty.. "The implications are staggering. Internet security software company Sunbelt Software was investigating CoolWebSearch, a spyware package, when they noticed that stowing away in the CoolWebSearch download were two trojans, a spam zombie engine, and a keystroke logging program. It was the keylogger program which took their breath away."

Aunty Spam's Net Patrol

I wait here while you check...

[gamehead200]

Huh?

I think Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and HijackThis! are sufficient to get rid of adware and spyware...

[ Topic moved. ]

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Well, with CooWebSearch it is particually hard to completely get rid of. And it comes with many variations. I have CWShredder but its never found anything, so difficult to say how effective it is.

But this particular security alert is more about the keystroke logging program. "It was the keylogger program which took their breath away."

That is not feeding you ads but harvesting your data.

CWShredder - Get rid of the hidden spyware that others can't get..

You can get infected by malware in several ways. Malware often comes bundled with other programs (Kazaa, iMesh, and other file sharing programs seem to be the biggest bundlers). These malware programs usually pop-up ads, sending revenue from the ads to the program's authors. Others are installed from websites, pretending to be software needed to view the website. Still others, most notably some of the CoolWebSearch variants, install themselves through holes in Internet Explorer like a virus would, requiring you to do nothing but visit the wrong web page to get infected.

The vast majority, however, must be installed by the user. Unfortunately, getting infected with malware is usually much easier than getting rid of it, and once you get malware on your computer it tends to multiply.

[Tarun]

CWS is extremely easy to remove if you do a few simple steps.