August 26, 2005
Friday August 26, 2005 • Howard Tayler

Spyware, Adware, and OCRemix
entry, August 26th, 2005

Just a quick-heads-up -- after Wednesday's entry, a few readers emailed me and told me that the Overclocked Remix site triggered their adware and spyware alerts.

Other readers have told me that it was clean as a whistle.

Still other readers pointed out that ocremix.org (the site where the cool remixes of video game music can be found) is NOT the same as ocremix.com, which is a parked domain and therefore likely full of all kinds of potential nastiness

I'm not made of time these days, and even if I were, I'm not the authority you should be trusting as to whether or not a site is free of malicious code. So, rather than going out and doing a load of investigative work at ocremix.org, I'm going to make two recommendations:

  1. Regardless of where you surf, or what your firewall is like, download an adware or spyware scanner and see what kind of web barnacles have fastened themselves to the hull of your browser. I used Ad-Aware SE Personal from Lavasoft (Link) and found a little crud, but most of it was the usual tracking cookies. No, I don't turn them off. I like to watch them grow, like malignant little chia-pets.
  2. Don't take my advice on technical matters. I haven't worked in the I.T. field for almost a year now, and haven't been "technical" since sometime in 1998. Refer to point #1 above.

Whether or not there's spyware lurking out there, I'm pleased with the music I got from the contributors to the Overclocked Remix site. It'll be months before I know which of it I am the MOST pleased with, and I'm looking forward to slowly slogging through the 1000+ MP3s I torrented.