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Ask HN: What are your tricks for fighting malware?
For the first time in maybe 10 years I got a bad download yesterday that just about destroyed one of my Windows computers-- registry edits have stopped me accessing the internet from it (proxy settings overridden and greyed out in internet settings) and background scripts I can't find are continually downloading and running adware at such a pace that the computer is too exhausted for me to even open the control panel before the screen fills with other windows.
As a software engineer, this was frustrating. What have you done when things like this happened to you, besides reformat?
- benologist 11y agoRemoving malware has always been hard, it's always persevere or reformat. I always favored reformatting since historically that came with some performance perks too but sometimes I used to get lucky and there would be a program that cleaned it up by Symantec. These days I use Ghostery + uBlock Origin to shut down two popular vectors for malware to reach you. It pays to be diligent about what/where you download stuff too. I also leave on OS X's security setting that prevents unsigned apps from running until you've clicked around a bit.