Techie question - uninvited software

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been tinkering with my PC security today (installing Zone Alarm and the like), and during this I noticed an odd program trying to access the internet when I’m connected.

The program is called tsadbot.exe (the path is along the lines of AdGateway/TimeSink, and a quick web search dug up some unwelcome information on it. Apparently, it’s a piece of software that loads, displays and rotates ad banners on certain shareware and freeware programs (e.g. PKUnZip, CamUnZip). The company that makes it claims that by reading the license agreement for the download you wanted you also agree to install this piece of ad software.

Now I don’t know if it’s sending my details out when it connects to get new ads, but I’m not happy about this. I’ve deleted all of the registry entries I can find associated with it, and I’ve deleted the .exe file.

Is this enough to disable this, or is there any more I can do?

2

You can go to Steve Gibson’s site: http://grc.com and run OPTOUT and ProbePorts. But installing Zonealarm is an easy ane effective way to save yourself grief.
Sailor had a thread about this earlier today and I posted two of them last week. I have no idea where they are, but I posted them. Someone else referred to Steve’s site as well. I apologize that I can’t remember who.

3

Cheers tcburnett – it was reading that thread that got me this far. I tried the unbinding technique on Steve Gibson’s site, and although it seemed to work the IP test still claimed I was vulnerable. I’ve now got Zone Alarm installed and am happy with it – I was just wondering how I can remove all traces of this ad program, or whether I’ve done enough.