Sometimes Trojans come in on small "ad hoc" Active-X files you download from a website that offers some sort of presentation. I picked one up that way this afternoon and discovered it only when Zone Alarm popped up to inform me that "stcloader.exe" was trying to access the internet and did I want to let it? Not knowing what it was, I checked "no," then I ran a search and found it in four places on my hard drive, all dated today. To find out about it, I typed "stcloader.exe" into the google search box and turned up all kinds of stuff. It's spyware that tracks your internet activity and reports back to whoever put it on. Also, it enables certain pop-up ads even if you have a pop-up blocker.

I have Norton AntiVirus which I've set to update automatically (sometimes two or three times a day!), but this thing got through undetected—as do spyware cookies and such, because they are not exactly viruses. Zone Alarm (excellent firewall) alerted me that it was trying to become active, so I blocked it and checked it out, as I said. When I ran a Norton AntiVirus scan, Norton reported that I was clean—of viruses. Then I ran SpyHunter. SpyHunter spotted it in all four places, and three others like it. With a click of the mouse button, I nailed the buggers and blew them into oblivion. Remind me to run the SpyHunter scan at least once a day.

Antivirus programs don't necessarily catch these things. I strongly recommend a good firewall, like Zone Alarm, and a program like SpyHunter or SpySubtract. The latter programs don't catch them coming in, but they find them whenever you scan with them and allow you to blitz them. When SpyHunter finds this stuff, it can also tell you what it does and who put it there.

Don Firth