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Havy problems caused by Webhancer. It was not deinstallable without reinstalling ALL Win2k, but I solved that problem with a personal Firewall from www.download.com Now the Programm still "lives" on my Machine but the Firewall beats it down every 1-8 hours ;-)

Hi, I was reading your comments about Webhancer... Boy, that is a terrible bug to get in the machine. I recently had a battle with it... but HAVE defeated it!!! I found a site: http://geocities.com/merijn_bellekom/new/webhancer.html That does actually get rid of the Webhancer problem and restore Internet activity. Hope this helps. Drew.

I got the damn thingo at the moment. It was detected by a free software called "spy Sweeper". Reading your comments about removing this spyware really scared me. I am thinking of how to remove it and will report back. I hope I don't have to again reformat my HDD and re-install windows. I cannot recall the number of times I had to do it. Luckily, rather than simply back up my data, I have spare HDD's with all my essential data installed and the operating system ready to fire-up. All I have to do is swap HDD's. I had the guts of my machine continually exposed to fresh air for the last few years, in order to be able to quickly rectify the results of constant hacking. I do have anti-virus and firewall programs installed, but somehow, I keep getting these bugs while surfing. [Portions of this comment were deleted because they contained a racist, paranoid, conspiracy-laden rant. --Adam]

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Webhancer is not only spyware, but a virus from a scum company. I read another poster calling it WebCancer. I feel bad for BellSouth support. I was on the phone with them for 3 hours attempting to find out why I lost my internet connection. I spent another 3 hours on my own. I then found a fix program on the internet (had to surf at work because I couldn't from home). This crap needs to be illegal. It is an absolute invasion of privacy and should fall under all virus distribution rules.

Hello, I've been getting webhancer downloadoing mp3advance safeshare watch out.

I hate this piece of lkdjflkjdfkj (*censored*)kdjfkjf(*beep*). I don't know how I got it but one morning I woke up and I had no internet connection. I thought Telus is down so I just waited, and waited and waited. Next morning my connection was still down. I decided to call Telus and talk to a representative. After following instructions it was clear that I could be reached and I could reach Tellus through the command line, so that meant my connection was fine, but there's something wrong with my computer! So in search for spyware/adware/whatever, I ran Ad-Aware and it found something called web-enhancer which it could not remove. I then wondered what a heck this was and I did my homework to research it...Only then I was beginning to see my hopless situation. I am so mad that I seriously want to sue the company that makes it. After trying just about every method of removing and reinstalling and removing the stupid Web Enhancer thing, I started smashing stuff around my house. I don't want to format, and I've ran out of inanimate objects to dump my stress on. What CAN I do? I definately don't want to reinstall Windows, cos I have TONS of files on my computer.

My son picked up a bundle of spyware/Trojan last night. The station was virtually frozen afterwards, it could not get to the web. Desktop had no response. My wife rebooted the station several times. It stayed the same. I tried to kill the many running suspicious processes under wintop (I am using win98) but I could not get them all, either no terminate option or auto restarting after termination, a typical malware behaviour. I should have attempted to uninstall the bundle but it was hard to get around and I don't trust any spyware to uninstall themselves. I booted the station into DOS and deleted all new program directories and their contents (about a dozen of them created within the same minute) This was the biggest attack I ever encountered. That stablized the station, it rebooted almost cleanly but pc-cillin complained about not able to find the mail socket on start up. The station stayed calm but I could not get to the web. I was able to ping the outside world. The routing table and DNS were correct but I could not telnet nor ftp out. It complained about socket failure everywhere. I had reinstalled TCP/IP for all NIC's but it did not help. I spent the whole night getting nowhere, banking the desk!@#$%... The next action could mean reinstalling windows with an old registry. That would be tonight or perhaps even tomorrow night's project. Mean time between recovery from a windows failure has been bad for me. It is around 2 days and nights, comparing to a couple of package reinstallations or kernel recompile, i.e. 10 minutes or so, for linux. Today getting to the web at work, I can tell the bundle contained at least webhancer, istsrv and 180search. Webhancer is the one hijacking my sockets and assisting the other spywares. My son mentioned that a pop up offered him to install toolbar after he downloaded some icons. He definitely answered no but the bundle still managed to install themselves onto the station. I told him to close the window by the frame without answering the question or even power down the entire station if it happened again. We cannot trust the intruders to respect our choice. When I read about webhancer, my first response was how can it be legel for any company with a name to do such a terrible thing. Has anybody managed to sue them? It has been years since webhancer is known to the public. To my surprise webhancer's office may be just in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately they use a P.O. box as address, otherwise I'll vocie my complaints in person. Some of the cleanup procedures had better work. It looks like we are just 50/50 or worst in getting the sockets back without the painful windows reinstall....

ha - i used to work for webhancer.

I removed Webhancer with Spybot. I ran it as normal and it detected the bug but could not remove it; then it recommended I reboot and run Spybot again. This time it succeeded. I had not been able to connect to the internet without disabling Norton security first, which was a bit worrying.

You ignorant twits! Like most software, if you just delete it it's bound to cause problems. All one needs to do is follow webHancer's instructions BEFORE using any other methods for removal. If you do that, no problems. As for the name "webhancer": the idea is that by collecting all this information and, yes, selling it to websites, it helps to improve the user experience. BTW, why do all these idiots install software without reading the notices that come up? BECAUSE IT'S FREE and all these cheapskates are just the kind of morons that would install FREE software and then complain about it.

Joe S is the ignorant one, you can delete it with their 'uninstall' program. Do you really think they will leave you alone? Loads of debris left after the uninstall is usual. I haven't installed this but then i am careful of what I install

UNLIKE what Joe S said, I actually did NOT install this terrible Webhancer by choice. I am almost certain that I got it just from "looking" at a website (can't remember the actual name, sorry) that gives you codes for cool pictures to put on myspace, etc. All of a sudden, dropspam.com was on my screen and then I saw dropspam icons on my desktop. I immediatly ran all 8 adware/spyware and virus programs that I have and they found webhancer and dropspam and supposedly took them off my laptop. I ran the spyware virus programs over and over and it never found anything after that. Well, I was still having major problems surfing the web, as it came to a complete hault time after time. Finally, last night I tried Windows LiveOne beta (for free) and it found MORE locations that they were hiding in (and it told me EXACTLY the precise location it found them too) and suddenly, my internet speed is back up to par and things seem to be going well now! You can find this on Windows main website under virus programs. Beth

webHancer is an canadan company I say we boycot candan products and call the canday government evey day and complane webHancer about the this company. Yes I know this will be hard to boycot candan products, but I will not drink Labatts Blue any more or anyother candan beers. Also call Webhancer and BUG the crap out of them tel 1-866-432-8328 1-613-254-9738 1-800-canada 1-800-622-6232

A very good anti-spyware removal utility is spybot search and destroy and it is free! It keeps my computer free of spyware (even tracking cookies) and it seems to remove them in the correct manner. I had webhancer and i removed it "improperly" without going to add/remove programs and i did not lose my connection. It worked perfectly and webHancer was killed from my machine. AntiVir personal edition classic is also free and with its new update ,7.0, it works faster and protects itself from being shutdown or removed by viruses. It even has a read/write active scanner that can detect iruses in the most inconspicuouis places on your hardrive.

Hi, In my case, Bullguard detected and removed Webhancer, and indeed, my internet connection was gone. BUT IT WAS VERY EASY TO REINSTATE MY CONNECTION: I am using Internet Explorer, and upon loosing my internet connection, there was a very nice link in the 'webpage not found' window from Internet Explorer that led to a kind of Microsoft diagnostic tool by which I could re-instate my 'sockets' or whatever in just ten seconds. I rebooted, and everything works great now. But it's true, Webhancer is leaving debris, because I see Bullguard keeps on getting attacked all the time by Webhancer, and has to block it over and over again.

Well, before you tar and feather Canada, better look at the spyware companies in the US. But there are ways to fight them. Find out who their clients are .. who is using the spyware. Let the client know how mad you are. I lost 9 accounts for one company and had the FCC all over them. Did it stop them, I'm sure it did not. But fight as best you can. Try letters to the editor in national papers, and in the papers of the hometown of the head office. Shame them a little. When corporate boob from XYZ Company is at the next Chamber of Commerce lunch, you think he wants to explain spying on American families? By the way, I checked on webHancer. Hard to find out all their clients, but read this website listing for a well known name who would hate the pubilicity http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18835826 Best of luck

Apparently, webHancer is back, and stronger than ever. After using Spybot Search & Destroy (which actually SAFELY removes this pain in the balls) BEFORE you even DREAM about removing this cretin to computers across the world - make sure you go here and download a very nice little app that will bring your internet connection back to life, should you lose it. http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm

hi i had webhacer on my pc just removed it before i google this site i used virgin media pc guard to remove it internet connection fine

It would seem that spybot isn't removing it this time, not from my system at least and not after a reboot and running on startup. Fun note, it disables task manager, runs in safe mode, and apparently disallows connection to websites that deal with easy removal methods (including spybot's forums).

Jeric I think that's not quite right -- I think other packages are getting installed (as a result of whatever it was that we ran to install the webHancer -- for me it was a keygen for Winrar3.71). Have a look in your C:\windows folder, and sort by time/date. Look for about 20-30 files (.exe, dll, and such) created about the same time. Notice that they are named with names similar to actual windows files, but slightly different. Googling them results in spyware descriptions for these files, but unfortunately deleting them hasn't stopped my popups.. As for WebHancer, spybot tries to delete it after a reboot, but I think whenever it gets to the two webhancer files/folders, it results in a bluescreen and reboot. I have a core 2 duo e6600 on a ga-965p-s3 motherboard (gigabyte). This repeats indefinitely unless I power off the system, and of course the problems are still there. I also had a couple of other trojans (smitfraud-c.coreservice and one other) which keep coming back as well.. im' going to reboot into safe mode and see if I can just delete the webhancer files from the command prompt. I really hope someone finds out where these guys reside in Canada. I for one would not mind taking some time off to burn down their building.