My husband's a good man with a too-generous soul. You see, his brother, who's lived with us on and off for the past two years, had a habit of using my laptop late at night to look at porn and other unsavory things. He must have unknowingly downloaded some self-installing spyware and adware. And while that wasn't the only reason we finally made him go live with another relative, it was certainly a contributing factor.
Anyway, I figured out how to delete the insidious self-installing "Communicator Toolbar" after a diligent review of my Task Manager/Processes. (That will be a story for another day.) But I still had that nasty Aurora, a.k.a. ABI, a.k.a. ABetterInternet, and I was out of patience. We lived with it for weeks, until my dear hubby took matters in his own hands.
He started googling like crazy, learning (for instance) that Revenue Direct, the company that created the yucky self-installing, self-propagating, always-popping-up Aurora, has come under fire for their practices. But they insist they get the user's permission before installing (yeah, right, if you believe that I have stock tipp for u get riche kwik). Of course they obscure, as much as possible, the way to remove said software.
Let's just assume that my porn-crazy brother-in-law DID fail to un-check a box that said, "also download ABetterInternet! and 1,000 other things that will drive your sister-in-law crazy!" He's lazy that way. I'll give Revenue Direct the benefit of the doubt there. But I will say this: I don't like their insidious adware, never would have downloaded it myself, and I want it gone. And my husband was finally successful by downloading the uninstaller from http://www.mypctuneup.com/evaluate.php, in combination with Spybot (which removed a bunch of other stuff, and continues to remove the adware that self-reinstalls).
And, oh yes, lest you think I judge my in-laws too harshly, I must put in a good word for my brother-in-law-in-law (my husband's sister's husband), who turned us on to Spybot and installed it for us, on his vacation. We love you, Steve.
1. mypctuneup.com is OWNED by ABetterInternet. It's their one last opportunity to get your personal info and dump crap on your computer. It's part of the scam. Your "solution" is going to jump out of the shadows and bite ya when you least expect it.
The only certain way to get rid of this POS is to back up all your files, wipe the hard drive and reformat, and reinstall your operating system and applications. And then remember that ALL "freeware" comes with costs and dangers.
Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jim Petermann