Thursday, November 28, 2013

A word about tracking cookies and yadro.ru


This is some of the rather limited information available about a Russian website called yadro.ru. It evidently acts as a hosting site for many others, some reports say as many as up to 260 other sites, and some of those are described as being sites that collect your personal information, the places you visit on the web, and other data you likely don't want made freely available to just anybody. Other sites hosted on there are reportedly spreading malware to unsuspecting users, or using browser hijacking processes to redirect your activities through their own websites, so they can monitor what you're doing.
So if you search your system and find anything relating to this Russian website, get rid of it, and then add that URL to your blocked lists in any of the browsers you use. If you use Firefox, it has an add-on called BlockSite that can block access to sites and disable their links. 



I'm including this just to show that this is an old problem, but one you may not be aware of yet, unless you've had some problems caused by it. Some of the references to it go back years, as in several many.... And there's an easy way to find out if you're getting tracking cookies from this or other sites - just go here and download this.


This shows a typical results list, and you'll notice the bottom entry is the site I'm ranting about. I've now added it to my blocked lists. But I digress; this program from SuperAntiSpyware is very good at finding tracking cookies, and it can also find and remove other kinds of malware. There's a free version as well as a reasonably-priced Professional version. If you use the free version, you must get the updates manually. Only the Pro version has automatic updates and  Real-time Protection. But both versions work very well.

You might also consider Malwarebytes Antimalware, which has some useful and effective tools for finding and removing hidden malware that may be disabling your protection. You can find it here. Check under its 'Tools' tab for more tools that can get you going even if something has stopped its main program. And those work, by the way. It is also quite affordable.

Further Reading: More ways to protect yourself on the web...

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