Is Adware Becoming More Sophisticated and Virus-Like?

[Astronuc]

My company uses McAfee ASAP (anti-virus) for security against viruses. It runs continuously and monitors all internet traffic.

Since Friday, the anti-virus software was activated just after I entered a couple of websites. One seemed to be a 'legitimate' technical site, while the other was site with information on music and song lyrics.

I was wondering if anyone else has had this experience.

It seems that some adware now contains coding similar to that contained in viruses or trojans. The objective seems to be the same - get information from one's computer - not just one's internet activity.

I have a firewall. I have set the browser privacy to Medium High and set many Security features to prompt for action so as to prevent automatic downloads. I will probably increase security further.

 

[TenaliRaman]

I would say that's not possible unless the pages use active-x controls which are every web-surfers unknown gateway to a computer polluted with spywares and adwares. I am a firefox user and installed ad-blocks and took reasonably good measures , so everythings fine with my PC box.

-- AI

 

[franznietzsche]

All the more reason to use anything but windows really.

 

[cronxeh]

Astronuc, don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer. About 6 months ago I've completely got fed up with constant popups, malicious software installs, that not even your firewall will ever prevent, and other numerous holes in this trully poorly written browser. Microsoft themselves have admitted that the flaw itself is fundumental in their design and can not be changed now. I've switched to Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and it works like a charm, without any of those bugs, plus has other great features that I'm sure you'll find useful.

 

[Anttech]

yeh firefox is great, far superior to IE... The irony is I cannot use it for internet banking because the banks I use, need active-x to work... So I use FF for everything but the thing I need most security with Internet Banking :(