When I first started providing support for users of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express back in 1999 I spent all of my time helping with system crashes caused by video drivers and other instabilities inherent to Windows and Internet Explorer/Outlook Express. Thankfully, Windows (and IE and OE) are far more stable than 5 years ago. Sadly, though, other problems have appeared to take their place.
The newsgroups are full of people asking for help with home page hijackings, search engine hijackings, unwanted pop-up windows, viruses, trojans, hackers and other nasties. As corporations have become more security conscious, and have started taking more care to protect their networks from hacks/attacks/illicit usage the much hated spammer, who used to concentrate their energies on hijacking company servers to send spam (known as mail relaying) are now targeting the home user with broadband. Trojans have been released that can, and have been, used by spammers to take over home computers and use them to send spam. Other trojans have been used take over computers and use them for DOS (denial of service) attacks against big name web sites. Script kiddies use unprotected home computers as their personal file servers, stealing bandwidth and hard drive space.
Cybercrime has become big business; forced hijackings of browsers earn big money. Adware installations as part of freeware and shareware earn big money. Phishing is at plague proportions.
I get a great deal of
pleasure helping people beat the nasties, and in keeping this site as up to date
as I can. If you have found my website useful, I won't mind at
all if you express your satisfaction or say thank you with a
donation ;o)
I have put together a lot of information over the years and it can be a bit hard
to find exactly what you need. You can use the menu to the left of screen,
or seach my
entire website by using the following URL -
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