Strange Posts

[Barney]

As I read the post here there are words highlited in red as if it is a link and almost always 1 word but when I open it it has nothing to with beekeeping.
Is anyone else expeinceing this are it just in my setup?
I don't get it anywhere else but here in Beesource
Thanks
Barney

[drobbins]

Barney

that's kinda mysterious sounding
can you go to a post that displays this behavior and copy/paste the address into a post here so I can see what you're talking about?
I've never seen anything like that

Dave

[peggjam]

Welcome to The Twilight Zone........

I've seen some, but haven't clicked on any, just thought someone was getting invintive getting their point accross.

[Sundance]

I'd like to see that too.....

[xC0000005]

Sounds like smart tags. You got spyware?

[Sundance]

I think it's good idea to have some level
of spyware blocking and removal. There are
some nice, effective, and free ones out there
like SpywareBlaster and SpyBot Search and
Destroy. You can get them both as well as
Ad-Aware at:

AdAware
http://www.download.com/3001-8022_4-10399602.html

SpyWareBlaster
http://www.download.com/3001-8022_4-10486084.html

SpyBot Search and Destroy
http://www.download.com/3001-8022_4-10401314.html

[xC0000005]

Sundance is right on. I grabbed a virtual machine image and infected it with every last bit of spyware I could dig up, and sure enough at least one of them started serving smart tags with the same symptoms you described. AdAware + Spybot killed them all as best I can tell.

[drobbins]

xC0000005,

what are these "smart tags" you speak of?
I thought that was a technology M$ abandoned way back

http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,290660,sid1_gci755198,00.html

are you talking about something else?
it sounds like you're suggesting some spyware could modify the html coming into his machine and insert links before his browser displays it
that would be WAY bad

Dave

[peggjam]

Is this something I should be concerned about, because I see them too, just never clicked on one. Maybe that's why this ole computer is so slow...hmmmm.

[xC0000005]

Hmm - dont' think we abandoned it. I got to use some of the stuff and it was very, very cool technology. Web authors were less than pleased about the potential though (much like the IE that let you edit how other sites displayed - click n delete banners). Yes, things can intercept traffic and modify it. Yes, they can hook crap in the browser.

Peggjam - The anti spyware things above are mostly free. If you are running with a lua account you may have issues with them having permissions. Be very careful running just any anti spyware though - I"ve seen a lot of spyware packaged as anti spyware. I run them on my machines every once in a while.

[peggjam]

"I"ve seen a lot of spyware packaged as anti spyware. "

Any particular ones we should know about?

[xC0000005]

It's like the common cold. These guys make money for infecting your machine, so they'll rename, lie, recompile, do whatever to get on. Dont' look by binary, the real solution is a combination of behavior and environment change. It used to be just about the browser, but mozilla and safari are attracting more attention with time.

Let's just start with this - if you see a pop up saying your computer is infected with spyware, and you don't have an anti spyware program installed,
DO NOT CLICK IT
Secondly, make yourself a normal user account and use it. Most windows users run as admin. Don't. Spyware can still do nasty crap, but it's harder if you aren't an admin. Change your default colors. I like a nice honey yellow and black setting. That way those false popups look wrong. Ask before you click. If you are running IE 7, turn on the anti phishing filter, and pay attention to it.

Anything else?

[peggjam]

I never click on anything, learned that on Ebay..LOL! Not sure what you mean by "running as Admin"...I guess I've been lucky, but I do have a no click policey on things I'm not sure of.

[Tom Chaudoir]

Are you talking about links like this (http://beesource.com/)? If you click it, it's exactly the same thing as:
http://beesource.com/

Doing it the short way has a real advantage when you have a mile long url to post.

It's not an attack on your computer. Just a cleaner way of posting a link. Here's how it works.

</font> Use the long form.</font> Click the "URL" button. A window pops up.</font> Fill in the URL and hit OK. Another window pops up.</font> Type in one or more words. That's what will show in the posting.</font>
Everyone using windows should be jumpy these days, but you can stand down from battle stations on this one. smile.gif