Francois Paget ( France )
Senior Virus Research Engineer, McAfee AVERT

Free Adware & Spyware Detection/Cleaning Tips and Techniques (Presentation)

Adware and Spyware have become the bain of computer users, probably even more than viruses. There's money behind their development. So, Spyware and Adware development will progress and become more complex.

Use of Anti-Spyware and Anti-Adware products is increasing as more large mainstream companies join the arena with offerings of their own. However, many products are deficient in their ability to completely clean a machine and rid it of all the Spyware or Adware components.

In the first part of this talk, we wish to define these two specific categories of software more precisely. Through some examples, we will show the methods they use to enter our machines.

In the second part, the main body of the presentation, we will offer a guide for detecting and removing such programs from your system. Where ever necessary, we will refer to commonly available, free and user-friendly tools that will do the job for you. And even if you don't need it, and hopefully you won't, we hope this explanation is educational and will help you to understand the machine you use better. Our aim is to help you do your job. Let it be your tool, and not the tool of someone else on the Internet.

Francois PAGET is a founding member of the AVERT (AntiVirus Emergency Response Team) Group, within McAfee. He works with them since 1993. In Europe, he is in charge of analyzing new threats, identifying them and ensuring the availability of detection and eradication modules. His main responsibility is the Windows 32bits environment study witch includes actual and future development in generic and heuristic technologies.

In 1991, he took over leadership of the "Virus Group? at CLUSIF (Club for the Security of Information Systems in France). At present, Francois PAGET is contributing to the works of the CLUSIF "Threats" Commission. He is also Secretary-General for the association.

With various others french specialists, he contributes to a technical encyclopedia in the field of Computer Safety. He is a regular conference speaker at French and international events in this field.

In the European arena, Francois is a member of EICAR (European Institute of Computer Anti-virus Research). With others professionals from all over the world, he is a member of various technical forums among the "WILDLIST" aimed at identifying all the viruses In-The-Wild worldwide.