Wednesday, Apr 18, 2012 at 17:18
Esarby - Those cookies are relatively harmless, they're just mostly marketing cookies tracking the sites you've been visiting. You might know how it works.
You look at, say, "Engel fridges" for sale on various sites - then a few hours later, you get this amazing offer for fridges from some crowd such as Groupon, Amazon, or Catch of the Day!
This is BIG business, this tracking your sites you've visited. It runs into mega-millions in dollar terms.
The big retailers pay good money to find what you might be buying next.
The real problems are the viruses and trojans that are designed not to be found. They have file names that imitate genuine Windows files that your computer needs to operate. These crooks who design these things spend every minute of their lives figuring new ways to scam you.
I've found the greatest problem with AV programs such as Norton is that they are retro-active, not pro-active. In other words, a scammer has to invent a virus or Trojan, and then send it around the 'net - and then it has to be discovered by Norton, and a "fix" issued for it.
Accordingly, these people are behind the 8-ball at all times. I also dislike the way Norton tries to take control of your computer excessively - and it also slows your computer down.
The best AV's are the ones that alert you when something suspicious is being downloaded - and it blocks the download, and awaits your approval to download it.
I found Malwarebytes is excellent for malware - and Tall
Emu's Online Armor is the best for stopping suspicious activity and viruses. Malwarebytes constantly warns me when a site is trying to download malware, and blocks it automatically.
A little pop-up window just says "Malwarebytes has blocked a malware download from this site (that I just clicked on)".
Online Armor blocks downloads that you haven't downloaded before, or marked as "safe" by you, and it lets you see what file is being downloaded. You can mark the file as safe if you know it's O.K., or reject it if it looks suspicious.
It gives you vast amounts of details that let you know what's going on, in real time, not 5 or 10 days after, as a lot of other AV's do.
Cheers - Ron.
FollowupID:
758732