Surreptitious installation of spy software isn\ufffdt new; but EMail PI claims its the first to hide the installation in a greeting card.
[link|http://www.msnbc.com/news/828942.asp|from this article]
I've been down this road with my son many times
He knows not to accept offers to install this or that that pop-up from web sites
He knows that you can uncheck boxes when installing software to limit what gets loaded on the machine
Yet he has been victimized by many BHOs (as HijackThis calls them) that 'help' the browser or hijack the home page
Some of these are really devious and hard to remove
a legitimate program can be uninstalled from Control Panel
you wouldn't need to run 2 or 3 types of s/w to find out what is running
here's an insidious example: searchdot.net
not only does it hijack your homepage and launch pop-ups that are not blocked by standard pop-up blockers because they are considered user requests but it also uses a script that replaces the homepage everytime you reboot no matter how often you change your homepage or edit your registry
the script is (or was, these things 'evolve') named
msoffice.hta
so even if you see it when running HijackThis you tend to leave it there
also it is placed in the \\windows\\fonts folder which is passed over by standard searches in Windows so it you know it is there and search you don't find it
so what's your version of tech support:
"my computer crashed"
"have you done anything since buying it besides turn it on or off"
"yes"
"fuck off"
A