Good read, rube! You know, no one else has asked me that!

I did not think I was doing anything "wrong." Shortly before, I had been to several websites, including TV Guide (of which I'm very suspicious) and one in a post at the OT Lounge. The only thing odd was a pop-up with content that made me suspect I had somehow received a new cookie not blocked by SpywareBlaster.

While opening CounterSpy to check on memory usage, I received multiple alerts from CS regarding a change in the shell. I blocked the change. Shortly afterward, a full scan revealed tracking cookies not covered by Ad-Aware or SpywareBlaster and a remote access trojan that did not show up on a second scan. Also onboard were what CS called Dark Omen, a keylogger. Frankly, I wasn't sure if this was real or a false positive. But it identified a load of registry keys as part of the keylogger. I chose to quarantine them in case they had to be restored.

As for security, I would say things worked. For one thing, ZA reported nothing calling home. And my computer is running fine.

Speaking of my computer, though its graphics processing capabilities are getting a bit dated, my Asus A7N8X Deluxe with an XP 2800+ and 1 GB RAM still flies. Visitors are amazed at its perceived speed and responsiveness.