JohnInKansas made some useful comments about 'bots' from web scan sites.

I have "HijackThis!" (the exclamation mark is part of the name).

www.spywareinfo.com is where you can find it.

You can use this to 'rip out' any such bot immediately after you have used it, if you would feel safer that way.

I regularly use it to 'rip out' RealPlayer's background process that wants to access the net all the time for it's own unfathomable inscrutable purposes. The damn thing reinserts itself every time you run the program to play music.


After a bit of use, you become much more familiar with what is on your machine and can quickly see if something new is there, which you can quickly 'rip out' by the roots. It doesn't delete it, just disables startup processes, host file insertions, etc.

Robin