Looking 4 Shareware to remove Spyware

[bubbajim]

That's funny.. I'm mean no hostilities, but I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of spyware on the Mac. All the garbage out there is haunting Bill Gate's software and rightfully so, it's the majority right now and hackers will have greater reponse by making their junkware functional for that crowd. You just do not see that on the Mac at this time. I'm not beating on the chest saying it will never happen, it is just not likely at this time.

As others have suggested, check out your running apps and dameons and such for memory hogs. That is your likely culprit.

Spyware on the Mac...haha...oh that was good. Thanks for brightening up my day.

[jonparadise]

I agree with using the Activity Monitor to check on running processes.

My G4 Powerbook was running slow for weeks, then I decided to check the processes and found that my Lexmark X83 Printer software was using 75% percent of my processing power.

I quit the program, and everything was back to normal.

Irritatingly though, every time I use the printer, is restarts this process in the background, which I have to quit all over again.

[scruffy]

There is spyware for the Mac - plenty of keylogging software. Search versiontracker for "keystroke". Nothing (as far as we know) that would get accidentally installed along with some benign seeming app - an enemy would need to gain access to your computer first. Still, there is nastyware, and it's even advertised on version tracker...

Unfortunately, ClamAV won't detect the stuff. I downloaded one or two and ran clamscan on them with the latest definitions; nothing found.

[bubbajim]

To me, spyware would be defined as software that is installed unknowingly from sources other than your local computer. Those sources would include from a website that you visit or a program that you chose to install. Installing a keylogger on your computer would not be considered spyware if you downloaded the keylogger and installed it yourself. To me it would be spyware if I downloaded Stuffit Deluxe and the installer for that program installed a keylogger on my computer without my knowledge. Having someone accessing your computer to install a keylogger would not be spyware either, I consider that hacking. As already stated, there hasn't been any programs out there to anyone's knowledge that contains companion software that does anything like installing keyloggers. Though I have seen some that do not give you an option to selectively install certain components, but insteads just installs a ton load of applications that you would likely not want to have on your computer. So for now it's still likely not spyware that is causing this particular issue.

Any word yet on those running processes? I would hate to give you the typical excuse I tell my windows users: Did you restart first?

[btoth]

To me, spyware would be defined as software that is installed unknowingly from sources other than your local computer. Those sources would include from a website that you visit or a program that you chose to install. Installing a keylogger on your computer would not be considered spyware if you downloaded the keylogger and installed it yourself. To me it would be spyware if I downloaded Stuffit Deluxe and the installer for that program installed a keylogger on my computer without my knowledge.

Yes, that's a good description of spyware (or "adware" as the people that distribute it would call it ).

There are some valid reasons to install a key logger on your own machine. It's only bad if it gets on there without you intentionally installing it and then the program "phones home" and uploads the key stroke logs to some other computer.

For my business, I spend most of my time cleaning spyware from Windows machines. Usually by the time I get called, the computer is so bogged down that Windows won't even load. A lot of the time, the spyware has come from programs such as Kazaa or some "utility" program that is supposed to speed up someone's web browsing or something (like a person with DSL needs to speed up their web browsing). They install the program, but unknowingly install 5 other spyware apps in the background at the same time. These are what kills their computer over time, hogging resources, overwriting settings, and conflicting with other programs and system files.

The problem with Windows is the programs can generally modify whatever files they want and install themselves wherever the choose (registry entries, system folder, etc.) Even in 2000 and XP where they have "privileges", most users (I do) run as an administrator all the time. Most Windows apps (especially games) require you to be an admin to use them!

At least with Mac OS X, there's a level of built-in restrictions on where you can put files, alter files, etc. without first having to authenticate yourself (even if you are an admin). Also, aside from the Unix layer, the OS X file structure is very easy to keep maintained and clean of unwanted files. The Unix layer gets a bit tricker, but a lot of the important areas are locked down without having root access. So, the day that a Mac OS becomes the dominant OS and we start having spyware, it will still be easier to prevent and remove unwanted software than in Windows.

[timbirdgraphics]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'm sure your suggestions will help me uncover my problem.