PDA

View Full Version : Question about TeaTimer



reh052965
2008-09-03, 18:35
Love TeaTimer...never had any problems with it. After updating to 1.6 TeaTimer stopped blocking. It blocked everything Yahoo Mail tried to put on my machine. I liked having the ability to click accept/deny even though it took a little longer to surf. No big deal if it's going to protect my system. Now I am having to run a scan two or three times a day to keep my system clean.

I tried shutting TeaTimer down, scanning with SpyBot, removing whatever it told me to remove, scanned with WinASO RegCleaner and removed all of that too, restarted TeaTimer, but no change in its behavior.

How can I get TeaTimer to block again? I sure hope the problem is on my end! TeaTimer is awesome.

As an aside, if this question was posted and answered elsewhere I could not find it. The procedure I listed above was posted in http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=1939. Also, the 'Here are similar threads we found' feature was very helpful. This feature came up after typing the title of this thread and clicking in the message box. Very nice.

drragostea
2008-09-04, 01:35
Love TeaTimer...never had any problems with it. After updating to 1.6 TeaTimer stopped blocking. It blocked everything Yahoo Mail tried to put on my machine. I liked having the ability to click accept/deny even though it took a little longer to surf. No big deal if it's going to protect my system. Now I am having to run a scan two or three times a day to keep my system clean.

I just wanted to give you a word of caution when you plan to clean everything that Spybot-SD detects (especially if you are testing the beta definitions or using a dated version of Spybot-SD) and run a registry cleaner.

What is your Operating System?

Are you using Internet Explorer?
What do you mean when you said TeaTimer is blocking 'everything' from Yahoo! Mail?

Can you clarify your question? By default when TeaTimer is enabled, it will prompt you with a registry change (Allow or Deny), unless it is an exception where TeaTimer uses the Black&Whitelists option and allow or denies for you automatically based on LASSHes.

reh052965
2008-09-04, 03:03
I use Windows XP Pro SP2 and IE 6.0. I am a seasoned programmer so I do not delete information Windows needs :). I apologize if what I wrote was vague. When I was running TeaTimer 1.4 every time I went to yahoo mail it would block registry changes multiple times every time there was a page update of any kind. Now, with 1.6, it blocks very little. Occassionally I get the familiar accept/deny dialogue box, but never will the box come up when I am in my Yahoo mail. It occassionally blocks when I first log in; however, when I go into my actaul email I have not received one accept/deny dialogue box with 1.6. With 1.4 I would get multiple accept/deny dialogue boxes when I went into my actual Yahoo mail box. I know Yahoo did not change their practices which means TeaTimer is not blocking the registry changes Yahoo Mail was attempting to make when I was running 1.4.

How do I get TeaTimer to block every registry change attempted on my system with an accept/deny dialogue box?

I truly appreciate any help you can offer.

drragostea
2008-09-04, 03:36
Hello reh. It's alright. I'll be more than glad to answer your questions.

Do you primarily use Internet Explorer as your main browser?

Can you be a little more specific about what the prompts are? I mean like what kind of change is it. Recalling from my experience, I have not encountered a prompt from TeaTimer when I use Yahoo! mail.

When I was running TeaTimer 1.4 every time I went to yahoo mail it would block registry changes multiple times every time there was a page update of any kind. Now, with 1.6, it blocks very little.
TeaTimer would automatically block it for you? Or have you ticked "Remember my Decision"?

What is really foggy is how is Yahoo! or Yahoo! mail interaction with your system/machine itself (not browser), such as adding a toolbar, changing browser preferences, or installation.

If you mean more like a "lockdown" or block-all option in TeaTimer, there is no such option (that I know of).

Denying a registry change would be restricting it's access to change/modify your registry. Allowing all of the registry prompts will be as if TeaTimer was never active.
--
Btw, a warm welcome to you from SaferNetworking Forums.

Greyfox
2008-09-04, 10:23
...How do I get TeaTimer to block every registry change attempted on my system with an accept/deny dialogue box?

Teatimer didn't at any stage block every registry change, but rather those that fell into a catagory that might indicate malicious intent. In more recent versions its scope has been widened, and the number of processes it monitors has also increased.

Many users who want protection either can't or don't want to handle having to make lots of informed decisions, and many don't want to be distracted by confirmation dialogues unless they are really critical, and in an effort to make Teatimer more acceptable whilst still retaining the real time protection it offers, use has been made of lookups of known items. (currently 151,802 blacklisted items and 283,740 known ratings. Teatimer now does not need to bother the user for many of its decisions, but it will continue to ask for the accept/deny decision outside of these. So perhaps you could say from a protection aspect Teatimer has been made smarter, and from an operator aspect it has been dumbed down.

You can select to have information balloons shown (right click on the Teatimer icon and tick show info balloons) and there have been some registry Tweaks to alter various aspects, but it does not have the ability to ask for user permission for all of the changes it monitors now.

I hope this rather generalised answer is of help.