GWonline.net Spyware???

[Mr. Kartan]

I was just wondering, in these days of more and more folks concerned about privacy, why is GWonline.net using spyware? I know my security setting have asked to allow a cookie from Valueclick and a few others. Of course, I reject these cookies, but was only wondering why?

[Dreamsmith]

What spyware are you refering to? I guarentee you, they've sent no spyware to me. What have you installed recently?

Advertisers frequently use cookies to track who has seen their ads, for various reasons (the most innocent of which is simply to see how many unique views they've gotten), but cookies have nothing to do with spyware.

[5zigen]

Valueclick is a pretty brazen spyware company. And yeah some of the advertisers for gwonline are pretty nasty.

I suggest you get firefox.

[Dreamsmith]

I suggest you get firefox.
Seconded. You can tell Firefox to simply ignore all cookies that are coming from somewhere other than the originating website, which stops cookies from adverts while still allowing you to use sites that require cookies for login/session information.

You can also get the Adblock extension. Sites depend on ads for revenue, so don't go hog wild with this, but sometimes sites show poor judgement on which advertisers to allow.

On LoadedInc sites, I've found the ads that appear on the bottom, middle, or sides of the site are usually tastefully done. However, the ones at the top sometimes aren't. I had to block the top ads because one of them was literally physically painful -- the contrast and rate it was flashing would cause intense pain right behind my eyes. I like to support sites and hate to use Adblock, but there are limits to what I can tolerate and still visit the site.

[Tarrant Rahl]

Valueclick is a pretty brazen spyware company. And yeah some of the advertisers for gwonline are pretty nasty.

I suggest you get firefox.

Which would those be? I've never had any issues, nor heard of any until this point, but if there are malicious ads I am sure the admin would be interested to know.

[5zigen]

I dunno which ones, i just remember a few times entering rpgrofurms (i didnt mean gwonline) that there was a website trying to install something. I usually dont take notice of who it is, but since ive gotten firefox it hasnt been a problem.

On top of that valuclick writes quite a bit of malicious spyware (took me quite a few hours to get their nonsense off of my mothers computer). I havent gotten the valuclick thing on this computer but if kartan was getting it... who knows. It might be an innocent cookie, but its still an innocent cookie from a company who writes malware.

[Tsume]

Double Click, and another...spawn frequently from the rpgforums.net system. Im able to block most of em though. As long as you have preventive programs, theres no worries really. These sites have advertising on them, and its not the sites theirselves, but the avertisers that are doing it. Atleast thats what I've assumed. It is pretty easy to block them though.

I'm surprised youve never noticed them though Tarrant, I have for a long while...but theyve never been an issue. At the most you have to clean out your temps, which most of us do regularly anyhow.

[LeftAlone-]

AhA!
Maybe we are getting something negative?
My comp started running extremely slow after I became active on GWonline.net
I run ADware every once in a while, and my net works fine. Then when i go onto GWonline.net , it suddenly goes megaslow. Every internet site after i visit GWonline takes ages to open, some times they dont even open.
Even my Steam on whicth I play CS on, goes dead..says that every server is down.. after i restart comp, its fine.. for a while.. then it slows down again.

Lately I havent been interested in doing on comp anything else that play CS and visit GWonline...so i dunno where else could i get something some possible Spyware.

( My moms comp with mega security settings wont even open GWonline.net)



Is Firefox free?

[Fallen_62]

Yes, Firefox is free. You can download it from their site or download.com, either one is safe. And Left, download Spybot Search and Destroy, too. It is also free, and with AdAware and Spybot, you catch ~98% of spyware on your computer.

[The one you Fear]

Cookies and spyware can cause quite some trouble eventhought not to be ment to do so. It can only send some data, but multiply this by 40 spywares = slower connection. Cookies can cause malfunctions, by staying on the hard drive for quite a long time they can become broken and cause errors of some kind.

The cure : :xsmile4:
for errors caused already -> TuneUp Utilities 2004 (free 30 day trial) - excellent!
for cookies and spyware -> Ad-aware 6.0, or sth else
for preventing this from happening -> firefox or (I use->) Avant Browser

To sum up : be nice to others, eat your vegetables, kill your spyware...
:p But above all else play Guild Wars

[LeftAlone-]

Oi Fallen, thanks mate!
*runs off to goOgle*

[Dreamsmith]

My comp started running extremely slow after I became active on GWonline.net
If I had to venture a guess, I'd say it might be from that invasive Javascript that was being sent by intellitxt.com, which would scan each page you load and add hyperlinks to any terms it could. I added them to Adblock the moment I saw them, so I can't say for sure, but I can't imagine that's a swift operation...

[Ized]

I can also recommend Firefox + Adblock extension to anyone. It's an unbelieveable combo. As such it's a whole lot faster and secure than IE6. I've been using Firefox well over a year now (it was renamed this year).

If you want to give it a try, I recommend you download the Firefox from Mozilla and give it a go.

Here's couple of good links :

Get Firefox from here: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Get Adblock from here:
https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=10&vid=664

There's also lots of other good extension available (free!):
https://update.mozilla.org

The article here contains a zip file download with a lot of good filters lines for Adblock. download, unzip and import to adblock. No ads anywhere anymore.

http://www.bloggidity.com/web/2004/04/15/firefox_and_thunderbird_259.htm

If you want to tweak your Fox to the max, here's some additional tricks you can do:

http://www.bloggidity.com/web/2004/06/25/firefox_browser_speed_331.htm