• Targeting minors a major problem 8/11/05
• Spyware that makes small children cry 2/4/05
• Hey, shouldn't this be illegal?2/1/05
• The seventh circle of spyware hell 1/28/05
• Think you're safe? Think again. 1/25/05
• Spyware that comes out swinging 1/21/05
• The pitfalls of pornography 1/18/05
• Free music with a terrible price 1/14/05
• Not even a geek could slay this beast 1/11/05
• 180search Assistant runs amok 1/7/05

Download.com users are no strangers to the frightening world of spyware. Each week, we'll share a new reader tale of spyware woe, so check back frequently for each terrifying episode.

CoolWebSearch: Public Enemy No. 1

I got the nefarious CWS! (That's CoolWebSearch to those not in the know.) It took me a week and a half to kill it.

First, I noticed my home page had been redirected to a questionable site of the nude variety. Then I noticed that if I mistyped a URL, I was redirected to a particular search engine. (I refuse to give the company the satisfaction of seeing its name in print here.) At this point I became very, very concerned, so I decided to open a folder I had created on my desktop titled Spyware War. I couldn't open it or any other folder, or even the My Computer icon. Now, I've heard of hijacking a PC before, but this was nasty! It was time to go into safe mode. I ran Ad-Aware from the aforementioned folder, and it found and removed 23 critical files.

"Whew," I sighed.

Reboot and go forth. Right?

Wrong. Twenty minutes later, it happened again! This was where the real education began. Before my ordeal was over, I had downloaded (from my brother's still-clean machine) and burned many antispyware programs to CD, including CWShredder, AboutBlaster, Spybot - Search & Destroy, Stinger, HijackThis, and a couple of custom process readers. After running all of them, I found I actually had four variants of the dreaded CoolWebSearch. I discovered this when I got a pop-up saying "Unable to start CWS." Apparently the variants were fighting each other.

My computer is now clean, I am much more educated, and I need a shower and a shave after my week and a half of late-night spyware wars.

--Paul
Indiana, U.S.A.

CoolWebSearch is one of the fastest-rising stars in the world of spyware--and that's no compliment. Webroot, the maker of SpySweeper, currently lists this program as one of the Internet's biggest threats, along with other well-known offenders such as Gator and ISTBar. As you point out, this ghastly piece of spyware has many, many variants, so downloading multiple antispyware applications was a smart call. Of particular importance here are CWShredder, a utility designed specifically to eradicate CoolWebSearch, and HijackThis, a popular tool that can help you cure especially troublesome infections by identifying and killing hidden traces. It's a good thing you still had a clean machine in the house for downloading all those applications. Single-PC homes should consider burning a CD full of antispyware programs in case of Net-connection failure.

--Download.com editors

Got your own spyware horror story you'd like to share? Let us hear it.