BackgroundContainer.dll is digitally signed by Conduit Ltd. and contains data and code that are used by software Search Protect by Conduit. Most anti-virus scanners detect it as either adware or PUP but there are a few that detect this application as a Trojan horse or malware in general, see this. If you are getting a RunDLL error saying that BackgroundContainer.dll module could not be found then your computer was or I'm afraid is still infected by this malware.
RunDLL There was a problem starting C:\Users\[UserName]\Appdata\local\conduit\backgroundco container\backgroundcontainer.dll The specified module could not be found.
So, basically, you are getting this error message because the BackgroundContainer.dll file which is a part of Conduit malware was either removed from your computer or for some reason couldn't be properly loaded but since your system is still configured to run this file you are getting this annoying RunDLL error message. But don't worry I got the fix and it's quite simple. Besides, this error message isn't something that you should really worry about but it's an indicator that you have more serious problems that need your attention. You need to remove Conduit malware not just simply remove the malware's scheduled task.
To resolve BackgroundContainer.dll issue, you can use Autoruns for Windows or open up Windows registry editor, search for BackgroundContainer and delete all entries you find. You can also remove this error message by removing the start-up entry in the Windows Task Scheduler. I recommend using Autoruns. Once the problem is fixed, scan your computer with anti-malware software. Stay safe folks!
Written by Michael Kaur, http://deletemalware.blogspot.com
1. First of all, download recommended anti-malware software and run a full system scan. It will detect and remove this infection from your computer. You may then follow the manual removal instructions below to remove the leftover traces of this malware. Hopefully you won't have to do that.
2. Download Autoruns for Windows and save it to your Desktop.
3. Launch autoruns.exe program (Vista/Windows 7/8 users right-click and select Run As Administrator).
4. In the top menu, click File > Find... and type the file name backgroundcontainer.dll, then click Find Next. Alternatively, you can scroll through the list and look for any entry related to backgroundcontainer.dll and Conduit.
5. If found, right-click on the entry and choose delete.
6. Close Autoruns and reboot your computer when done.
Several times a day, most days of the week, we receive email from our readers asking the same question: how to bypass surveys? (mostly sharecash, CPALead and file ice). We love getting email, however, it's not always possible for us to reply individually and we are starting to get a little bored.
We think surveys is pretty much always a sign of a scam, so probably no one's going to like this answer. Here's how it works. CPA (cost per action) ad networks pay only when the desired action has occurred; for example, an online survey has been successfully completed. Affiliate marketers make commission based off your submission of information to a company database. It can be email address, phone number or any other information about you. This information can and probably will be used in future marketing campaigns.
Let's say you want to watch your favorite TV show online. You found a website which looks legit and has your favorite TV show. You're about to watch it but the website brings you to a survey that you have to fill out to get to the content. Usually, you can choose from several offers. My all time 'favorite' is the Love Thermometer. Basically, you need to sign up for the Love Thermometer by entering your phone number. It costs $10 per week to send your 'scores'. Bonus: they will send ads to your phone. Isn't that great? Honestly, it doesn't worth the risk. The truth be told, there are literally hundreds of fake internet survey websites. So, I wouldn't fill out paid surveys if I were you. After all, you may not get the requested file or video simply because it doesn't exist. There are many free and safe websites that offer file downloads and video streaming without annoying pop-up surveys.
Recently we stumbled upon another potentially harmful online survey which encourages users to install free 'Coupon Printer'. Everyone wants to save money, so Coupon Printer isn't such a bad idea after all. However, you need to read every single line very carefully before installing 'printers' and other software recommend in surveys. In our case, the 'Coupon Printer' offer came with an extra 'ingredient' -- MyWebSearch adware. We couldn't even finish the survey because our antivirus software blocked it.
Unfortunately, there's no easy way to bypass surveys on websites. Let's take Share Cash surveys for instance. You can't really bypass their extremely annoying surveys and it's not because we haven't tried, it's because the way they laid it out. Disabling JavaScript in your web browser won't help. Using XJZ survey remover and NoScript add-on won't help you either. None of these tools can actually fill out or skip surveys for you. They are designed to reveal premium (protected) content in a slightly different way. Please note, surveys ≠ 'premium' content lockers. However, you might get lucky with other survey websites.
Bypassing surveys:
1. Survey-remover.com, formerly known as XJZ Survey Remover. This bookmarklet was designed to reveal protected areas on websites. Removes surveys most of the time but it doesn't work if the survey leads to a download (sharecash). Works on Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. For more details, please visit this website: http://survey-remover.com/bookmarklet/
2. Use NoScript. A great web browser add-on trusted by many PC users. It was designed to block malicious JavaScript files but in some cases it may help you to bypass pop-up surveys too.
3. Disable JavaScript. This method is the most easiest one. However, we have to admit it rarely works. Most likely, you will get an error message followed by step-by-step instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.
4. If you get surveys from websites that normally do not serve them or surveys simply pop-up on your computer screen then your computer might have been infected with malware. Cyber criminals use surveys to monetize traffic. Download and scan your computer with recommended anti-malware software to make sure that the system is malware free.
We hope this helps. If you have any questions that aren't answered here, please feel free to contact us. Simply leave a comment below. Also, if you know how to bypass specific surveys sites, please share the information with our readers. Good luck and be safe online!
My anti-virus program found and removed a virus from my PC. I've also run several anti-spyware programs. They found and removed like 10 or more Trojans from my computer as well. My antivirus program says I'm clean and protected and it doesn't really seems to be a virus on my PC. However, I can't just use every possible security product to make sure that my computer is completely virus-free. I don't want to format the hard disk and reinstall Windows either. I'm just wondering if I'm infected or not? How can I tell if my computer is infected? Thanks.
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More and more people are using computers nowadays, however not everyone is paying too much attention to its security and some of them even have no clue whether or not his/her computer is infected. Of course, if you don’t see any obvious symptoms of infection, you may think that your PC is virus-free at the moment, but are you sure?
The truth is that there’s no way to prove that your computer is absolutely clean. You may use every possible scanner or bunch of up-to-date tools, but the possibility of infection still remains. You will probably agree that no tool catches everything. So how can you be sure about your computer?
For instance, let’s take the most common symptoms of malware infection:
warnings from your anti-malware software,
unusual activity on your system,
slower computer performance,
occurrence of unauthorized remote connection,
inappropriate internet speed,
questionable pop-ups telling you that your computer is in danger and needs a scanner or other program you’ve never heard of,
problems with booting or rebooting before login and etc.
Actually, everything that is mentioned above might be a symptom of infection and might be not. In other words, occurrence of these symptoms not necessary means that your computer is infected as well as not having them won’t guarantee that your machine is totally clean. Even if your computer works perfectly, it doesn’t prove anything. You might be OK and might be not. There’s simply no way to know.
The news, obviously, isn’t very exciting… But what can you do? Well, at first you should stop claiming that your PC is virus-free, and second, you should do everything to increase this likelihood greatly. Basic steps are presented below:
install and run and anti-virus program, always check if this software is still valid and database is up-to-date,
use only licensed software programs and don’t forget to update them (in case any vulnerabilities, discovered after purchase, will be corrected),
chose adequate firewall settings (control the software and hardware which is using a router),
be careful when sharing information with other computers, because one infected computer may spread its infection to others through the connection channel,
use your PC rationally.
The last point refers to your activities and consciousness. No one will help you if you keep on opening spam or unsolicited attachments, surfing through unsafe websites and other places where you can easily get malware, spyware or virus infection. It is strongly advisable to be careful with internet content as well as with CD’s, USB sticks or other input devices before opening and using them.
To sum up, no tools or safety measures can protect you from yourself. But if you follow all recommendation honestly, you will be able to say that your computer is as clean as possible.
I think my boyfriend has installed a keylogger or some sort of spyware on my desktop computer which tracks what I type. I suspect he wants to find my Facebook and e-mail passwords. He's a bit jealous and our relationship is like a roller coaster. Sometimes I just find it hard to love him. Anyway, a few days ago I asked him to help me with my computer. It took him about an hour to fix my PC. An hour is plenty of time to install spyware on a computer I guess. I did a full scan with my anti-virus program and it says my computer is clean. Is there anyway I can find out if spyware is installed on my computer? Anything helpful would be appreciated.
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Currently, various computer activities are carried out daily – from chatting with friends to accessing your online bank account. However, since these activities contain personal information about you, anyone, who has an access to your computer, may install a spyware program on it purposely. Actually, this kind of program gives an opportunity for installer to hack your personal data (such as account logins and passwords, etc.) and/or to monitor your activities (the list of visited websites, screenshots and etc. are available). It is not only destroying your privacy, but also may have serious consequences (e.g. empty bank account, changed passwords), so if you suspect anyone, for example your boyfriend or ex (fairly common), spying on you, keep reading and get some advices.
Of course, the simplest solution to detect and clean spyware is to show your computer for a normal technician. However the easiest way is usually not the cheapest one and therefore here is something you can try before spending a lot of money. Basically, the best thing you can do is to format the hard disk(s) and reinstall Windows or any other OS you are using. The negative side of this decision is that you have to refuse all your data. Well, you can save it in other device and then copy it back, but doing that might affect the final result negatively. The fact is that some spyware programs can be hidden in your files, restoring them will bring back the spyware together.
In case you have no wish to erase all your data or you want to save at least some of it, you may consider using anti-spyware programs. Most of them are rather effective against commercial and non-commercial (e.g. created by your ex or other malicious people) spywares. Unfortunately not every program is able to detect all kind of spywares, but using at least one, will greatly reduce the risk of infection and/or will help to detect already infected places by scanning them. We recommend using this anti-malware software. It usually catches keyloggers and spyware very effectively.
Sadly, despite of all your efforts, there are no guarantees that this will definitely recover your privacy and safety. It is only recommendations which are supposed to help you in the beginning. And if you still (after taking all above mentioned means) have a feeling like being spied on, then it is probably wise to invest some more money for professional analysis of your PC.
About Passwords Nowadays, having a strong password is a must, however people are more likely to have an easy one or two and use it for every online account or email. Probably it is conditioned by the fact that more and more things require passwords and remembering them all might be not as easy as it seems. However having an easy password is a bad idea too, because criminals or other malicious players can easily hack it, steal all your information and even cause damage by, for example, expending all your money. Therefore some simple tips below are intended to help you in creating a strong password.
5 Basic Rules
The first and most important – keep your password in secret. This must be applied for everyone, even the closest family members, friends or colleagues – you can never be sure for their precaution or intentions. Moreover, don't use unsecured channels or email for sending your password to someone.
Make your password easy to remember, but difficult to guess. Perhaps it seems impossible, but actually it is not that difficult. Check the section below, it will suggest you how to make a strong memorable password. And remember – avoid writing your password down, unless you lock it or encode.
Don't use the same password for everything. Doing that increases the possibility for malicious people to track and hack your password. Each password you choose must be new and different. If you have many problems with remembering a huge number of different passwords, try to distinguish your information to very sensitive and not so sensitive (no harm if hacked) and then for the latter use strong, but the same password.
Change your password regularly. It means at least once a year or whenever you suspect that somebody knows it.
NEVER change your password because of someone claiming that you have to. This is a popular fraud in some circles. A hacker pretends to be your system administrator or other important person and sends you an email, in which he asks your password for some feigned reasons. If you believe him, he will get the entry to your account straightly from you, practically without any hassle!
Features of Weak Passwords
a common word written in English or any other language,
a word(s) that means something to you and can be found in your environment, such as the name of your husband/wife, child, pet, favorite book, food, film character, musician, etc.,
your name or nickname even spelled backwards, upgraded with numbers, mixed case letters, etc.,
an alphabetic or numeric series either forwards or backwards, for example: 1234567 or 7654321, ABCDEFG or GFEDCBA,
a row of same numbers or letters, i.e. 0000000 or ZZZZZZZ,
a common keyboard shortcut, i.e. QWERTY or AZERTY,
a single number tacked on the end or beginning of the word, i.e. elephant7 or 7elephant.
Features of Strong Passwords
at least eight characters long,
mixed upper and lower-case letters (ElePHanT), numbers (1-9) and symbols (!ӣ$%^&*),
memorable, but unpredictable,
not written down,
easy to type without looking at the keyboard, in case someone is watching over your shoulder.
Creating a Strong Password There are more ways in which you can create a strong password, however only two of them are suggested here. Using them will definitely help you to create a strong and memorable password.
Phrase method. The basic idea behind this method is to pick a phrase and transform it into a very complicated, but easily remembered password.
1. First of all, think of a simple, at least eight words long sentence that means something to you. This could be a summary of your daily activities, family or just the lyrics of your favourite song, for example "My wife hates me when I am snoring". 2. Then take the first letters of each word. You already have a completely unique string of characters: "mwhmwias". 3. To make your password even more complex, you should mix upper and lower case letters, add digits and/or symbols somewhere in the middle. Using the example above, you'd get: "mWhm9wiAS" 4. Then change regular characters with special characters by your own rules. These rules can be something like this:
replace 'a' with @
replace 's' with $
replace 'o' with 0
replace 'i' with !
replace 'and' with & or +
Using the example above, we get: "mWhm9w!@S". It is evident that no one will simply guess it. Here's a video which explains how to choose a strong password, which is easy to remember but still hard to crack:
Three-part method. Another method is based on composing your password from three different parts. For instance, let's create an example of password for your "Facebook" account.
1. Primarily, we can use three or four characters from the website name written is several ways, such as "FAC" or "fAc" or "FaBo", etc. We chose "FaBo", because it is quite memorable row. 2. In contrary to the first part, the second part should be completely random and composed from digits and/or symbols, for example, "39$2". This part can be written down, as it can't be remembered so easily, but also should be hidden in a secret place. So we already have "FaBo39$2". 3. Finally, add three more characters, which can be named as your "PIN", for example: "!56". This part should never be written down, just like you bank card's or phone PIN. Place it either on the beginning/end or in the middle of your password, just like this: "!56FaBo39$2" or "FaBo39$2!56" or "FaBo!5639$2". Now you have a complete password.
Remembering Your Password As it was mentioned many times above, remembering passwords might be sometimes difficult, but writing them down is too reckless. If your head is already crowded by countless logins and passwords, you can try two pretty safe alternatives:
a secure password management software program, which stores all your passwords in highly-encrypted databases and is locked with only one master key or a key file,
a strong encryption utility, which encrypts text files, i.e. your written passwords.
Few Ways of Hacking Your Password Probably you are still wondering, how anyone can get hold of your password. Well, here are the main three techniques introduced, which will convince you that having a weak password is very incautious.
1. Stealing. This is the most popular and simplest way to compromise passwords, which can be realized by finding it written down somewhere or simply watching over your shoulder when you type it. 2. Guessing. It is incredible how many people are using the same "standard" passwords. There are many sites, which presents the top of most popular passwords, usually the very weak ones. Check it out, maybe your password is not as unique as you thought until now! 10 Most common passwords:
123456
111111
123123
qwerty
password
password1
123321
abc123
letmein
123456789
3. Attacking. There are two ways of attacking:
a brute force attack. The main idea of this method is to try every thinkable combination of letters, numbers and symbols in order to guess the password. Obviously, doing it manually takes too much time, but there is a bunch of password guessing and hacking programmes, which shouldn't be underestimated.
a dictionary attack. This method is a little bit more intelligent than the previous one, because primarily checks if your password can be found in dictionaries. It means that with a help of various software tools, hacker tries every word in your national and foreign language dictionaries, until your password is found. Moreover, the list of the most popular passwords is also tried.
If Your Password Gets Stolen Anyway... Unfortunately, even the strong and memorable passwords sometimes can be hacked or stolen. This, for example, might happen when someone breaks into the system that stores it. Therefore it is very important to notice any suspicious activities as soon as possible, because then you might be still able to inform the authorities or block your online account before something bad happens.
By default Microsoft Windows hides important files from being seen with Windows Explorer in order to protect these files from being modified or deleted by the user. Unfortunately viruses, rogue programs and other type of malicious software may hide files making it hard to find and delete them. Please follow the step-by-step directions below to show all hidden files in Windows.
1. Go to Start → Control Panel and choose Folder Options.
2. Double-click on the Folder Options icon. Click on the View tab.
3. Under the Hidden files and folders section, click Show hidden files and folders, and remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files. Click OK.
1. Click on the Start button and then click on the Control Panel menu option.
2. In Control Panel, click Appearance and Personalization, and then click Folder Options.
3. Click the View tab. Under the Hidden files and folders section, click Show hidden files and folders, and remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files. Click OK.
1. Click on the Start button, then type in "folder options" into the search box. You will now see the search results. Just click on the Folder Options to open it.
2. Under the Hidden files and folders section, click Show hidden files, folders, and drives. Then remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files. Click OK.
Now your computer is configured to show all hidden files and folders. Hidden files will appear as if they are faint (slightly grayed out).
