In the best interest of our players, we are providing this service to assist you
in removing "parasite" code that you may have intervertantly installed on your computer
that significantly effects your ability to browse the web.
Parasite Detector
The following will indicate if you have a known parasite :
What Are Parasites
There are a lot of programs out there that may get installed on users' computers
without their knowledge or consent. Many applications described as "freeware" come
infested with parasitic software that latches onto the web browser,
provides little or no benefit to the user and can:
plague the user with unwanted advertising ('adware');
add advertising links to web pages, for which the author does not get paid, and hijack affiliate-program payments ('scumware');
watch everything the user does on-line and send information back to marketing companies ('spyware');
leave security holes whereby arbitrary code can be executed on the user's computer (typically this is used to allow the program to update itself); if the software does not make proper use of cryptographic authentication, it could be possible for hackers as well as the responsible company to execute arbitrary code;
degrade system performance and cause errors thanks to being badly-written.
So be careful what you install - you may be getting more than you bargained for!
Shouldn't Anti-Virus software detect parasites?
Maybe. Technically they are not viruses, but 'trojan horse' code. Sometimes they are installed with the 'consent' of a user who hasn't bothered to read the small print or does not understand what they are. Sometimes they come completely without warning.
Some anti-virus packages do detect some parasites. For example, McAfee can detect (at the time of writing) FlashTrack, and wnad and dlder (two parasites that this script can't catch), but only when deliberately asked to look for 'programs' as well as viruses.
