The Man in Blak 0 Report post Posted January 28, 2004 Just a warning for those of you who search on the internet for cracks and software patches and such. If one of your search engine leads you to a crack from X-Cracks.com, don't click on it. The site is the primary distributor of the Smartsearch.ws spyware deal and it is a BITCH to clean and remove. This thing embeds itself into your Internet Explorer registry, flooding your favorites with Smartsearch junk, changes the prefixes on all of your pages so that Google toolbar searches to go smartsearch.ws, generates fake 404 messages whenever you try to find a page that has the words "smartsearch.ws" and "remove" in it, and (finally) changes the linking on a program (for instance, notepad) so that whenever you open it up, it simply recreates the whole virus all over again. You can download CWShredder here and, for additional support for this spyware (and other CoolWebSearch variants), I'd definitely recommend checking out http://www.merijn.org/ as well. This thing is an absolute pain in the ass, and easily the most annoying trojan/spyware I've ever encountered in my entire career as a Tech. Support guy. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Eclipse 0 Report post Posted January 28, 2004 Well, I will make sure not to ever go to that site, because I would probably lose my patience trying to remove that... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Fook Report post Posted January 28, 2004 Thanks for the heads up Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest KidKrash Report post Posted January 29, 2004 I'd say it serves the people right who go looking for shit illegally. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
The Dames 0 Report post Posted January 29, 2004 ....I had to format my hard drive because of it. It's a BITCH. Dames Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
