I’ve spent a fair amount of space lately on techniques for getting rid of spyware. If you’re sick of having your browser hijacked by this crap, consider installing SpywareGuard, which claims to prevent many common types of spyware from being installed in the first place. I can’t personally vouch for it, but it gets good reviews from people I trust. If you’ve tried it, let me know how well it works for you.

Robert Scoble reports on his recent lunch with the Internet Explorer team. The IE team is looking for feedback as they design the next version, and they’re reading Robert’s blog. So if you have comments, now is the time to make them known.

My list is short: tabbed browsing, a better Favorites manager, full support for IE add-ins, and the ability to load 99.999% of all Web pages “in the wild” so I can use one tool for Web browsing.

Anyone who has used a browser that supports tabs can’t go back to the old IE. For the last year or so, I’ve been using MyIE2, which I enthusiastically recommend. (Steve Bass at PC World just came to the same conclusion, saying “My2IE looks and feels like IE but I swear–it does so, so much more. Tabs, built-in ad and pop-up blocking, and much more. It’s so good that I’ll be writing about it in PC World just as soon as I can.”)

Scoble’s article mentions an alternative called iRider, which is terrifically whizzy and slick. Instead of tabs, it uses a navigation pane along the left edge of the browser window. Unfortunately, it adds a separate preview icon for every page you look at. On many of my favorite sites, that makes navigation a nightmare, and it seems to break a few sites. Still, some great ideas there and I’ll keep experimenting with it in my spare time.

I’m surprised that out of 141 comments (and counting) on Robert’s blog, hardly anyone has mentioned Favorites. I use Powermarks, which doesn’t require any upfront categorization and supports full-text searching of my bookmarks collection. If the IE team hasn’t looked very closely at this app, they should. I’d love to see its functionality incorporated directly into the next IE.

What about Mozilla? Hey, I have it installed and I think it’s an amazing piece of software. But it simply doesn’t work on a few of the sites that I visit every day. Yes, that’s not the Mozilla team’s fault, but that’s the way the world is. And I don’t want to have to remember “Oh, this site doesn’t run with Mozilla so I have to open it with IE.” So I use Mozilla about 2% of the time.

This question arrived in my Inbox today:

I’ve used Spybot S&D daily as well as Ad-aware since you suggested it a short time ago. However, the problem continues. In my case, it doesn’t appear to be “pop-ups” that are the problem, but “pop-unders”. The darn things pop-up (sometimes two or more as I close IE).

First of all, you shouldn’t have to use either program daily. These are clean-up utilities, and you need to use them only after you’ve installed a program that you think may have added something nasty to your computer, or when your computer is displaying symptoms of spyware (excessive pop-up windows at sites that don’t normally display pop-ups is one such sign).

Have you downloaded the most recent updates for both programs?

It is possible, indeed likely, that you are infected with a spyware program that is either not detected by these utilities or is actively suppressing their ability to work. Some variations of the CoolWebSearch “virus” will do that, for example. These invaders are ugly and persistent programs.

If you’re suffering from similar symptoms, I strongly encourage you to go to SpyWareInfo.com. Read the FAQ, What to Do If Your Browser Has Gone Crazy. Follow the link to the tutorial on how to remove spyware. If Ad-aware and Spybot don’t work, you will probably need to download a utility called HijackThis (you’ll find a link at the beginning of the detailed instructions) and post your results on the SpywareInfo forum. However, don’t do this until you have read through the FAQs.

Whatever you do, don’t delude yourself into thinking that this is too much trouble or that you can just put up with the nuisance. A number of these programs also contain Trojan horse software that can open your system to further infections and allow someone to steal passwords to sensitive data, such as your bank account login. A Trojan horse can also make identity theft a reality. If you think this “infection” is hard to get rid of, try cleaning up your credit report after someone has stolen your identity.

Good luck.

The idea of Personal Firewall Day was hatched last year by a group of computer security professionals who want to get the word out to home users that everyone needs protection from viruses, worms, and outside intruders.

Pass the word to someone you know.

If you’re wondering why your e-mail is suddenly filled with messages containing paragraphs of gibberish, Wired magazine has the explanation.

The story quotes Anthony Baxter, one of the developers of SpamBayes, a free, open-source Bayesian antispam filter: “I’d say at least half of the spam that I bother to look at now contains a paragraph or two of random blather. This is yet another escalation of the arms race between spammers and those people who like to have a useful e-mail inbox.”

According to Wired, “The addition of seemingly nonsensical words is aimed at confusing the antispam filters that incorporate Bayesian analysis techniques, such as SpamBayes and SpamAssassin. These filters examine incoming e-mail messages and calculate the probability of it being spam based on each message’s contents.”

Beginning January 7, some Norton AntiVirus users began experiencing odd and annoying delays when they tried to open some types of documents, such as those created in Microsoft Word. Symantec is blaming Verisign. See the official response here. This article also includes a fairly cumbersome workaround.

Apparently, updating the certificate revocation list resolves the problem. If you’re still experiencing these delays, let me know.

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to fixyourownprinter.com. My trusty old LaserJet4 was jamming, and these guys appeared to have the fix. I promised a follow-up. Here it is.

These guys rock! I ordered the kit via the Web. It arrived a few days later. It included a very clear instructional video on CD-ROM and a kit that included all the parts I needed. The video walked me through every step of the repair, which involved partially disassembling the printer and replacing a half-dozen parts. All told, it took about two hours, and the result is a printer that works just like it used to.

Two thumbs way up for these guys. If you’re having problems with a printer, check ’em out.

I’m in the process of migrating to a new design for this site. You may notice some odd visual glitches or links that don’t work; I should have everything fixed up in a day or two!

If you’re expecting a new computer, bookmark my latest Expert Zone column: Set Up a New PC. It includes a short checklist of the items I go through when I set up a new computer with Windows XP.

In the past two weeks, I’ve run across a new form of parasite that’s worming its way onto computers. One particularly obnoxious pest is called CoolWebSearch. I hadn’t even heard of it until I did a little research at one of my favorite anti-spyware sites, SpywareInfo.

A wonderful page called The CoolWebSearch Chronicles describes the many variants of this problem and includes a tool that should get rid of it, if you’ve had the misfortune of being zapped.