[AT] Do you have HotBar on your computer?

[Arthur Southwell]

Hello gang,

A few months back, maybe as long as 9 months or more, someone sent me several email messages with a URL at the bottom advertising a free utility called HOTBAR. It was suppose to have wonderful things in it and smiley faces and so on.

(I know there are some computer Gurus out there who already know this, but there are a lot more users out there that don't!)

Well, I finally downloaded HOTBAR. I wasn't totally unhappy with it so I let it remain on my IE main page. Little did I realize it had spyware imbedded in it. It uses Data Miner to glean information from your hard drive and send it to entities that use the info for goodness knows what. 

There was an article in toady's newspaper that talked able how "SpyWare" can and will slow down your computer operation. I had a spy ware locator/killer downloaded, "ad-aware", but hadn't installed it. I installed "ad-aware" free version this morning and it found 138 spyware items and 130 + or - were HotBar using Data Miner. I set ad-aware to work deleting the spyware items and my computer, which was running so slow I was about to trash it, livened right up. I have since uninstalled HotBar.

The point being, if your computer is running slower than it should, it may be choked up with spyware inquiries. If you're running HotBar, I'm sure it is and your are freely issuing personal data to the internet. 

Do with this information what you will. I'm just passing along an experience of mine.

Have a good one,
Arthur



Arthur Southwell
Arthur Southwell Rebuilding
Arcadia, Florida 34266  U.S.A.
asouth at strato.net

http://www.homestead.com/artsouthwell/index.html
http://photos.yahoo.com/mr_nocatee
http://community.webshots.com/user/asouth944
_______________________________________________
AT mailing list
http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at