[qoute]Norton Internet Worm protection has detected and blocked an intrusion attempt.
[/quote]
Thus sayeth my anti-virus software. I checked the computer yesterday and cleaned off the spyware. Today I’ve been to SDMB, G’Dope, webmail, the jeep message board, and amazon. Do the SDMB techies run protection against such things? I’m thinking the most likely culprit is the jeep page. I’ll send the admin an e-mail.
I’m so relieved you’re talking about your 'puter, John. You have no idea. :eek:
If you’re on unprotected broadband, you don’t even have to be at a website for the worms to find you. They just slither along looking for computers to infect.
I’m on dial-up.
That makes little difference when you’re online.
Are you on an apple or PC? What kind of firewall are you running?
I’m running Norton Antivirus 2005 (with Live Update) on a PC. I ran Guard Dog on my last computer, but it slowed things down so much the computer was unusable. The worm attempt was detected on the PC.
I asked about protection for my Mac PowerBook G4, but the general concensus was that it would be superfluous. I don’t even know any anti-virus programmes for Mac.
Strictly speaking, true, but worm makers know the IP blocks that are assigned to broadband users, (As example, subscribers to a hypothetical ISP might have IPs in the 234.68.xxx.xxx block) so they’ll concentrate their infection efforts there knowing they’ll find a lot of always-on computers on fast connections there.
Randomly-appearing dial-up computers are a fairly fast-moving target, and since they’re going to be disconnected in a fairly short time, they’re harder to exploit and use as mail relays, botnets, etc.
So am I. I get hit with CoolWebSearch Hidden DLL regardless of where I go. Out there are the evil computers detecting any online computer they can get at, and trying to infect it.
Then, I have to reboot in safe mode and run CWShredder, AdAware, and Spybot to clean things up. Sadly, they don’t make a firewall that will run on my machine (ZoneAlarm requires a minimum 200 mhz).
Unless you’re visiting shady porn or warez sites, where you go online does not matter. The worms, spyware, etc come looking for you.
Get a hardware firewall then (e.g.: a router).
I do. 
Hmm, I’ll have to look into it.
Jetico makes a small freeware firewall you might want to try out.
It will lock out all network access (incoming or outgoing) by file unless you allow it.
It is tiny as well so it doesn’t eat many resources.