MP3 file share scam & search hijacker removal

[otto]

Hello
I was brought to this forum after reading an article by Linda Buquet "Spyware Scum & Search Hijackers busted by FTC" at threadwatch.org. Anyway I wanted to share some things in case they may help someone. I found a new scam on the internet recently while I was trying to search and download a song (p2p) that was difficult to find. Someone has devised a method to quickly create fake mp3's titled to what you are looking for that contain advertisements or other malicious material. Luckily the suspiciously small file size gives them away. Also I had a run in with a particularly nasty search engine hijacker that replaced a search result with any of several search engine pages. They are generic and for the most part similar in appearance. Also they would attach an advertisement to the top of your I.E. home page (which was particularly annoying to me since my home page is my website). I had to use another computer to search for a fix. I did successfully remove the problem by using a free program called "ewido anti-malware" it was highly recommended by some reputable technicians. HOWEVER, I cannot varify its long term implications at this time but I can tell you that it worked quite well in my case.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Otto,

Thanks so much for letting us know about all that. Would be nice if everyone on the net could play nice but there are tons of scammers and security risks out there.

Please everyone follow Otto's lead and post about any problems like this that you run into so our other members can learn from your run-ins with this type of scum.

[Eminem]

Thanks for sharing the information. However, this is a common problem with most people. It's not really anything new I myself sometimes use p2p softwares like Limewire to download stuff. Sometimes the files I get from peers contain adwares and stuff like that. Once I was trying to download a crack of a game and instead of the crack I downloaded almost 1000 adwares !! This I know because I immediately scanned my system with Spyware Doctor that showed me the results.