Preventing trojan dialers in XP?

message from Shano on 4 Jun 2004

I've recently found a few trojan dialers on my XP system, which have
been a pain to remove but not impossible (touch wood), but have a
question about preventing these in XP.

Other than the obvious (i.e. restricting web sites), how do I prevent
these from auto installing in the first place? On my previous system
(Win 2k, ADSL connection through ICS via another Win 2k box) with
Google toolbar popup stopper, ZoneAlarm software firewall, and
Messenger service disabled, I still received popups asking "Do you
want to install this trojan dialer". Okay, I'm paraphrasing here but
you get the idea. These were stopped by simply closing the dialog box
and moving on, and were never installed.

Now however, with Win XP Pro (all critical updates installed) and ADSL
via hardware firewall/router, the first I know of these trojans is a
message from AVG antivirus that it's been installed on my computer.

Is there any way to prevent these dialers installing automatically?
Any javascript/activeX settings that need to be tweaked?

Any help appreciated...

Thanks in advance

Shano

=?Utf-8?B?cg==?= replied to Shano on 4 Jun 2004

ZoneAlarm should do just fine. It suppresses pop-ups and restricts other junk.
Make sure your box is clean to begin with.
Scan and Immunize using Spybot-S&D http://spybot.safer-networking.de/ .
Have Ad-aware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ installed as an extra scanner.

roger replied to Shano on 04 Jun 2004

Hi Shano,

You can go to IE > Tools > Internet Options > Advanced options >
Security tab and click on customize, set activex settings to ask
permissions. The downside is many web pages will ask your permission
to set activex, which will hamper a lot your browsing.

You can try using another browser, like Mozilla
www.mozilla.org

Good luck

Archived message: Preventing trojan dialers in XP? (Microsoft WinXP)