Announcements

It's been a week since Microsofts new Beta 2 for Windows Vista is available to the public, so we found it's time to announce that all our tests so far have shown that Spybot-S&D is completely compatible with Vista - scanning, immunizing, permanent monitoring, updating & tools (except for a minor graphical glitch in the process list tool that does not prevent the application from work as intended in any way). Microsoft has misunderstood a broken server during Spybot-S&D update for an incompatibility when testing it, so when you're installing Spybot-S&D and Vista warns you about an incompatibility when installing, just go ahead and install anyway. We're already discussing this with Microsoft and the warning should be gone very shortly...

Our website for corporate customers, www.safer-networking.ie, is currently unavailable due to DNS problems of our provider NovaraIE; the domain now points to irlhost.com, a provider we already left four months ago. We're expecting that this problem will be solved today, but should you still receive the reminder of the old provider over the weekend, please keep in mind that DNS propagation sometimes takes about 24-48 to reach everyone. More...

As a result of our ongoing efforts to protect our users from frauds, we're happy to announce that we were able to shut down three major mock sites: spybot.org is now registered to us as well, and the misleading selling of anti-spyware software on spybot.cc and spybot.biz has been shut down. Our main targets now are free-spybot.com (with a dozen other very similar domains) and spywarebot.com, who still cheat many people each day into paying for something they believe would be Spybot-S&D. If you are one of those who were mislead by one of these pages, please let us know at legal@spybot.info. More... (Update: the email address has been written correctly, since the spam-avoidance form mislead some people.)

... and if they can't do it with quality, they'll try with libel. Back in April 2005, Norton Antivirus by Symantec already had a false positive about one of our products. We couldn't get Symantec to react at first, we wrote an article about that on our website. After that, Symantec could suddenly react, and told us that it would be a question of honor to deal with such things without any publicity. They removed the false positive, and we removed their name from that news article. Now, we have received more and more complaints over the year that Symantec would recommend to its customers to deinstall Spybot-S&D, because it would corrupt Norton Ghost images. We finally found their knowledgebase article about it, and were a bit...

A lot of discussions have taken place in the past few days about a new iTunes feature. When you update to iTunes 6.0.2, it will tell you the only new features are video preview in the shop and some bug fixes. But the most visible new feature you see once you have it installed is the so-called MiniStore - a not-so-small shop frame in the lower third of the main iTunes window. It displays albums similar to the ones you click inside your song database. Personally, I would regard a list of similar music as a good way to broaden my music horizon. But since there were so many public opinions and comments on this topic, some of our detectives decided to give it a deeper look. Let's start with the good news - as soon as you hide the MiniStore...

One has to admit that Apple has been quite fast in reacting to concerns many people had about the new iTunes ministore. There were various reports that Apple officials told the ministore would not collect any information at all, or at least the data was not stored. While we finally got into contact with the right people at Apple and are verifying this, Apple also made another important quick step: it made the ministore optional (you'll now just get a page that allows you to use or hide it when you first open the new iTunes), even for existing 6.0.2 downloads, and if you choose to use it, it seems it will no longer use Omniture. As we wrote on the 13th, our intention in detection one iTunes file was to show Apple that their customers...

Sony's clumsy care for it's customers privacy has been shown widely around in the rootkit affair a few months ago. Calm observers have argumented that it was kind of hyped. Well, we've got another example of Sony's attitude towards privacy. Patrick is not really listening to main stream music a lot, so he was quite surprised to get advertised for the Band OOMPH! in his inbox in late 2004. Even though he's receiving a lot of spam, this one came from Sony BMG, a company that huge and well known that it should be able to afford spam. After writing the usual letter requesting information about all stored data, removal of that data and confirmation of further barring of his email address, Sony BMG did actually all that after a preliminary...

In the past months, many users have complained about 'bad checksum errors'. While switching to an update mirror nearer to your location should often improve the situation (for help on how to do that, see step 4 of our update how to), we are proud to announce that PlanetMirror (many thanks to you, guys!) has offered us their huge network to help our users getting faster updates. PlanetMirror is serving an average of 1.5 Terabytes per day in total, so they should be quite able to boost our updates, and while this is still in testing, we invite you to select PlanetMirror the next time you've opened the update page inside Spybot-S&D and let us know your experience through our bug form. More...

While European commissions are still struggling with Microsoft about fair competition, raising a bunch of secondary discussions about the inclusion of anti-virus and anti-spyware applications in the upcoming Windows Vista, CNet visitors have decided in a recent poll which software they like most. Spybot-S&D clearly leads CNets Sunday Smackdown, for which we want to thank all our users! And we're still struggling to get even better... this weekends update included an updated detection engine that will make heuristics - detection of yet unknown threats - much easier. More...

Symantec From letters that Symantec employees (Mr. Ingenpass and Mr. Sanchidrian) send to Spybot-S&D customers: Patrick Kolla is German living in Bochum (Germany). Patrick is well-known in his neighborhood for such scurrilous behavior [becomes immediately extremely abusive, insulting everyone]. These insults, along with quite a few other very personal attacks on Patricks person, have been received by many persons who wrote to Mr. Ingenpass and Mr. Sanchidrian directly. These responds have been sent by a Yahoo email address which did not respond to any queries, which means that this address is either one created by the two Symantec employees, meaning quite heavy personal slander by Symantec itself, or that Symantec passes along...

It's been a week since Microsofts new Beta 2 for Windows Vista is available to the public, so we found it's time to announce that all our tests so far have shown that Spybot-S&D is completely compatible with Vista - scanning, immunizing, permanent monitoring, updating & tools (except for a minor graphical glitch in the process list tool that does not prevent the application from work as intended in any way). Microsoft has misunderstood a broken server during Spybot-S&D update for an incompatibility when testing it, so when you're installing Spybot-S&D and Vista warns you about an incompatibility when installing, just go ahead and install anyway. We're already discussing this with Microsoft and the warning should be gone very shortly...

Our website for corporate customers, www.safer-networking.ie, is currently unavailable due to DNS problems of our provider NovaraIE; the domain now points to irlhost.com, a provider we already left four months ago. We're expecting that this problem will be solved today, but should you still receive the reminder of the old provider over the weekend, please keep in mind that DNS propagation sometimes takes about 24-48 to reach everyone. More...

As a result of our ongoing efforts to protect our users from frauds, we're happy to announce that we were able to shut down three major mock sites: spybot.org is now registered to us as well, and the misleading selling of anti-spyware software on spybot.cc and spybot.biz has been shut down. Our main targets now are free-spybot.com (with a dozen other very similar domains) and spywarebot.com, who still cheat many people each day into paying for something they believe would be Spybot-S&D. If you are one of those who were mislead by one of these pages, please let us know at legal-at-spybot.info. More...

2006-08-04 Adware ++ IEHelper.e ++ Caishow ++ 91Cast ++ Boran.g ++ Win32.Nurvel.a ++ Win32.Agent.y + 2Search Hijacker + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2Installer + CoolWWWSearch.Service + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2DLL + CoolWWWSearch.Toolband Keylogger + Elite Keylogger + EvilEye + LttLogger Malware + Smitfraud-C. + VirusBlast + Look2Me ++ Aest ++ WB.Hider ++ EngeryPlugin + IMNames PUPS + Hotbar ++ Baigoo.a ++ Tencent Spyware ++ Trickle.Gator Trojan + SpyQuake2 + Zlob.PornMagPass + Zlob.XPasswordManager ++ Amiboide + Amitis ++ AOLTrojan ++ Asassin ++ BackAge ++ Bandook ++ Beast ++ Win32.Agent.se ++ WinAntiVirusPro2006 ++ HB.RichMedia Total: 347862 fingerprints in 47547 rules for 2167 products.

2006-07-28 Hijacker ++ Related-Search-Defender + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2Installer + CoolWWWSearch.Service + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2DLL Malware + Smitfraud-C. (3) ++ True Sword ++ X-Con-Spyware-Destroyer ++ X-Spyware - SpywareDetector + Zeno + UnSpyPC + WinFixer + Virtumonde ++ SpyHeal ++ 180Solutions.Iyus-M + Smitfraud-C.Toolbar888 + DyFuCA.InternetOptimizer + Web-Nexus + MediaMotor Trojan + Zlob.PornMagPass (3) + Zlob.Downloader (3) ++ KillAV.HostsMgr ++ Zlob.AudioCat ++ Zlob.Foro ++ SeachToolbarCorp.ToolbarVision + SpyQuake2 ++ Win32.Qoologic ++ AstaKiller Total: 345832 fingerprints in 46987 rules for 2143 products.

2006-07-21 Dialer ++ Citofarera Hijacker + CoolWWWSearch.Yexe + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2Installer + CoolWWWSearch.Service + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2DLL Malware + Smitfraud-C. + Mailbot + Sallity.Badcro + ISearchTech.ISTsvc + ISearchTech.SideFind + Vcodec.eMedia (2) + Adware-Patrol + Adware Remover + Doctor-Adware-Pro + ETD-Security-Scanner + Pestbot + SpyDestroy-Pro + Spyware-Soft-Stop + ScanSpyware + Trojan-Guarder PUPS + Registry Cleaner Security + Windows Security Center.Firewalldisabled + Microsoft.WindowsSecurityCenter_disabled Spyware + 180Solutions.SearchAssistant Trojan + Zlob.XPasswordManager + Vcodec.5StarVideos + Zlob.Downloader (2) + Spabot + Win32.Lager.aq + ParallelTasking + Win32.Small.v + CoolWWWSearch.SearchToolbar...

2006-07-14 Hijacker + SystemDoctor2006 + Win32.Tactslay + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2Installer + CoolWWWSearch.Service + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2DLL Keylogger + EyeSpyNow Malware + Spy Sheriff + Smitfraud-C. + Smitfraud-C.Toolbar888 + PlayPartyPocker + AdsAlert + ADS-Remover + SpywareBOT + AdwareAlert + ADWareBazooka + AgentSpyware + YourSoft-AntiVT + YourSoft-AntiVS + Easy-Spyware-Killer + Goodbye-Spy + AdwareX Eliminator + Anti-Virus-Pro + KillSpy + PC-Health-Plan + Vcodec.eMedia + Look2Me + Zlob.MN + SurfSideKick PUPS + Network Monitor + AdWare Pro + AdwarePunisher + AdwareSheriff Spyware + VX2.ABetterInternet + WhenU.SaveNow + GAIN.Gator Trojan + Downloader.Tsupdate.L + YazzleSnowball_Wars + Zlob.Downloader + BPS Spyware Remover +...

2006-07-07 Hijacker + CoolWWWSearch.Compstuic + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2Installer + CoolWWWSearch.Service + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2DLL Keylogger + SnapFiles-SoftForYouLogger Malware + Vcodec.eMedia (2) + Command Service (3) + AdStatus Service + Web-Nexus + Smitfraud-C. (3) + Win32.Rbot.gen + Zeno (2) PUPS + Bearshare Spyware + Banker-AJD + Axfibula + PurityScan Trojan + TeamTaylor.Screensaver (2) + Zlob.Downloader + Small.cxl + BPS Spyware Remover + KillAndCleanScanner (2) + ConHook (2) + Slogger + Tibs.vq + Cimuz Total: 336547 fingerprints in 44407 rules for 2075 products.

2006-07-01 Hijacker + SearchCentrix + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2Installer + CoolWWWSearch.Service + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2DLL Malware + ABetterInternet + Smitfraud-C. + Swizzor + SpywareDetector + Browsezilla + Web-Nexus + DyFuCa.InternetOptimizer + MediaMotor + Vcodec.eMedia Spyware + SilentSpy + Axfibula + 180Solutions.Zango Trojan + Perlink + Tibs.ao + BraveSentry + Small.cxl + UpToFind.RelatedSearch + Win32.Lager.aq + Win32.Small.em + Zlob.PornMagPass + VirtuMonde (2) + Dialer.GlobalAccess + YazzleSnowball_Wars + SearchNet + TeamTaylor.Screensaver Total: 334484 fingerprints in 43927 rules for 2064 products.

2006-06-23 Hijacker + Crackspider ++ SpywareSoftStop.Hijacker + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2Installer + CoolWWWSearch.Service + CoolWWWSearch.Feat2DLL Keylogger ++ Ardamax (2) ++ HellzLittleSpy Malware ++ VirusBlast + Winhound + SurfSideKick + Smitfraud-C. ++ TitanShield ++ Pokapoka79 ++ Win23.PE ++ XXXTeenPornPack + Vcodec.eMedia Spyware + PurityScan Trojan + MZS.Spoolserver32 + Wild Media + Haxdoor-H ++ Zlob.XPasswordManager + Zlob.Downloader ++ SearchSpy ++ Win32.Murlo.du ++ Small.cxl ++ LowZones.df ++ Win32.Lager.aq (2) ++ SilentCaller.pw ++ S.P-Bot.B ++ ConHook + Virtumonde ++ Zlob.PornMagPass (2) Total: 332792 fingerprints in 43604 rules for 2048 products.