Just to show how sneaky these criminals are becoming, the following is from the Spybot web page (see below):

"ClientMan is a new Malware target; first reported as suspicious, it became clear soon that it will pass the ZoneAlarm firewall without user consent. When it tries to connect to the Internet, and ZoneAlarm displays it's dialog whether the program should be allowed to connect or not, ClientMan will auto-click the 'Yes' button after checking the 'Always' checkbox. This way, it grants itself Internet Access without the user even noticing more than a short flash of the ZA dialog."

Heading off SPAM in the April 8 PC Magazine, has a fairly detailed description of how to get useful tracking information from SPAM email headers so that you can make meaningful complaints to/through your ISP. It won't help much with the "Message" popups, but may be useful for some of the rest of the junk. (This issue shows a cover with "How to Network Your Home" as the main headline if you start at the magazines homepage linked below.)

The latest issue (April 22, 2003) hasn't been posted as the "current issue" yet (probably about a week – 4/8?) but has quite a lot of good stuff on AV and Spyware. One of their better recent issues. Check back in about a week at PC Mag Home and scroll down to the "current issue" in the left sidebar. It will have "Spyware" as the main headline when it's posted.

In the Spyware category, none of the products reviewed got particularly good ratings. The well known Ad-Aware is now at ver 6, and rated as "much improved" over previous versions, but still pretty mediocre due to failure to recognize much of the "newer stuff" that's appearing. A new(?) product, "Spybot Search and Destroy" from PepiMK Software, Spybot was given an "Editors Choice" rating, but even it was considered "less than excellent." Its "Free – donation requested – ware" if someone's interested in looking at it. (I haven't yet.)

Their latest review of AV programs gave Norton 2003 the "Editors Choice" for home users. They gave McAfee a better rating than I'd have guessed, with the rating based on improvements in the newest version. (McAfee refused permission to have their previous product reviewed in a recent similar comparison.) A product I hadn't heard of, NOD32 2.0 got good performance ratings, but was judged too complex for most users: power wonks only. The only personal AV reviewed that got a "less than satisfactory" rating was Panda; and even it wasn't too bad, but it lacked features like easy update, scan speed, and depth of configuration capability.

For corporate users, Sophos got fairly good ratings, but has added a new twist – free individual copies for all employees of companies using the corporate Sophos. Talk to your boss? Best rating in this category went to Trend Micro, though.

John