jdonner
2009-02-06, 19:59
Hello, all--
I don't know if anyone else has encountered this, but friends of mine have been hit twice by a false positive. After doing a S&D scan, the main Firefox "bookmarks.htm" file (where it stores all saved bookmarks) has been targeted as spyware and recommended for removal. I found that in each instance, the file contained an entry for "http://www.spywareinfo.com" (a defunct site about spyware issues). In each case, my friends dutifully clicked "fix selected problems," and S&D deleted their bookmarks file entirely!
In many cases, this can be fixed by restoring from a backup copy of the file. In Windows, at least, there should be backup copies in the user's documents & settings folder, under "application data/mozilla/firefox/profiles/{default profile}/bookmarkbackups" where {default profile} is the name of your profile folder. Copy the newest one to the {default profile} folder and rename it "bookmarks.htm" to restore. If you don't have backups, you may be out of luck, unless you have a file undelete program and catch it in time. A good reason to keep regular backups! There is a great extension called FEBE, which backs up your Firefox profile and can be set to do regular scheduled backups. It's available at the Firefox extensions site.
Just a heads up, in case anyone else has had this happen. Hopefully, this can be rectified by the developers in the next round of updates.
Jay
I don't know if anyone else has encountered this, but friends of mine have been hit twice by a false positive. After doing a S&D scan, the main Firefox "bookmarks.htm" file (where it stores all saved bookmarks) has been targeted as spyware and recommended for removal. I found that in each instance, the file contained an entry for "http://www.spywareinfo.com" (a defunct site about spyware issues). In each case, my friends dutifully clicked "fix selected problems," and S&D deleted their bookmarks file entirely!
In many cases, this can be fixed by restoring from a backup copy of the file. In Windows, at least, there should be backup copies in the user's documents & settings folder, under "application data/mozilla/firefox/profiles/{default profile}/bookmarkbackups" where {default profile} is the name of your profile folder. Copy the newest one to the {default profile} folder and rename it "bookmarks.htm" to restore. If you don't have backups, you may be out of luck, unless you have a file undelete program and catch it in time. A good reason to keep regular backups! There is a great extension called FEBE, which backs up your Firefox profile and can be set to do regular scheduled backups. It's available at the Firefox extensions site.
Just a heads up, in case anyone else has had this happen. Hopefully, this can be rectified by the developers in the next round of updates.
Jay