Which spyware prog?

[Gurm]

So I, like everyone else, have been fighting spyware for some time now. The fight, for me at least, has boiled down to four main programs:

1. Spybot Search & Destroy

Spybot used to be the king. Sadly, it's been a while since it has. For a while now it has lagged far behind in the detection game, and it had some ... issues. For example, its removal of some types of spyware would just hang the system. Its active monitor was nearly useless after a while. It would stop you from adding favorites, but heaven forbid it stop some spyware from installing itself. It'd tell you all about the new startup items that the spyware was adding, but do nothing about the spyware itself. It had no ability to remove threats from memory.

Now 1.4 is out. It's better... but still a far cry from Spy Sweeper or Ad-Aware in terms of ability. Its detection engine swaps back and forth with Ad-Aware. It finds some things Ad-Aware doesn't - and vice versa.

But it's FREE. And it'll remove MOST stuff. My big problem is that the stuff it WON'T remove... is the really nasty stuff that NEEDS removal.

2. Ad-Aware

Was the best for a long time. I still own a license for it, but don't use it much. It mostly finds cookies. Its interface is spiffy, but by default clicking "full scan" doesn't actually DO a full scan. Kind of irritating. Also as pointed out above, there are always things that it doesn't find that the others do. Sort of irritating. It CAN remove just about everything, but you often have to work too damn hard to get it to.

Ad-Watch used to be horrible. Worse than useless since it blocked lots of stuff that you WANTED to run/see/open. I don't know how it is now.

3. Spy Sweeper

I own Spy Sweeper, because 9 months ago I had a crippling CWS (CoolWebSearch) infection, and NOTHING else could remove it. It turns out I had the first CWS variant to use the DLL-injection garbage that many now do.

It still finds, and removes, more spyware than ANY other program I've used. It finds things Ad-Aware doesn't, things Spybot doesn't, and also finds everything they DO.

It was the perfect program... except that they upgraded to 4.0 and it got bloated. Now it reduces system responsiveness. Its file scanning is overzealous. You can actually FEEL a huge difference in the way windows works if you just kill the active monitor. That's too bad. I still own it, I still have it installed, but I no longer leave it running.

4. Microsoft AntiSpyware

This shows real promise. However, it suffers from several major problems:

- Lack of info. It says lots of things like "getting update 20471". WTF is that? No datecode, no "your definitions are 20 days old". Just "checking for update... getting update 2405712". Grr. And when scanning it just says "scanning now... 26% complete". I'd love to know WHAT it's scanning. And when it finds stuff, getting information out of it about the infection is like pulling teeth.
- Slooooow. It's probably the slowest scanner out there. And its resident shield, while remarkably effective, uses up to 50% of system resources at any given time!

But if they can perk it up some, and make it a LITTLE more power-user-friendly, it'd be great. I look forward to it being out of beta.

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So what do y'all use? I'd love to know of other programs that actually catch most of the spyware. I'm ESPECIALLY looking for an active shield that doesn't make the computer run like dog shit.

[Helevitia]

Well, I like programs with the least amount of work. Microsoft's Antispyware just works. There is nothing to think about. It updates, runs and that's it. Adaware started requiring work and last I checked on Spybot, it was lagging far behind in updates.

Oh and Antispyware doesn't seem to be bloated.

MHO
Dave

[ZokesPro]

I've been using the two latest builds of Ad Aware and Spybot and kept them both up to date whenever possible, and they have always kept my system clean.

[Dr Mordrid]

I have M$ installed and it's been doing good, but what's been catching a lot of stuff that gets past M$ is the new Yahoo toolbar with Anti-Spy. It's also pretty good at blocking popups.

Dr. Mordrid

[Jon P. Inghram]

Firefox seems to be a pretty good spyware blocker, I havn't had a single piece of adware or spyware since I've been using it. I've got Ad-Aware installed just for gp's though.

[Admiral]

run Spybot 1.4 and see how many tracking cookies it finds for Firefox

[The PIT]

run Spybot 1.4 and see how many tracking cookies it finds for Firefox

None but then I've just used crap cleaner.

At work we use after crap cleaner.

1) Ms Antispy.
2) Ad-Aware
3) Spybot
4) Hijack this
5) Cwshredder

a bit of white magic

Then another free tool called Mwav which tells you where the leftovers are so you can kill those as well.

Then finally spyware blaster. The student then goes away happily and goes to the nearest pron or p2p site and re-ineffects himself/herself by downloading uncheck executables.

[Jammrock]

I use MS Antispyware at home because it has the best active scanner. At work, when systems are already loaded to the brim with garbage, I use a combination of Spybot, Ad-aware, Add/Remove Programs and Hijack This.

Start with Add/Remove Programs, because some of them are so deeply entrenched that none of the spyware scanners can truly get them clean, and running the uninstall will get them in a cleanable state.

Then I run REGEDIT to search the RUN keys to make sure I get off the trojan installers (ISTbar and several others have started to use trojan installers that use randomly generated EXE names), and then delete the installers from %system root%.

Then I run Ad-aware because it's the best at stopping processes and getting the nitty gritty done.

Then I run SPybot to clean out the deep stuff in the registry that Ad-aware, and all the others, don't seem to catch.

ANd lastly I run Hijack This to make sure nothing else is hiding on the system.

I hate spyware.

MS Antispyware does very well with getting most of it off, but I've run into stuff that not even it can clean, so I typically use the above combo since people don't like the MS antispyware pop-ups.

Jammrock

[Jon P. Inghram]

Umm... Jammy? What do you do that exposes your system to that level of spy/adware?

[Jon P. Inghram]

run Spybot 1.4 and see how many tracking cookies it finds for Firefox

That brings up a good point, why does Ad-Aware not scan Firefox cookies?

[Jammrock]

Umm... Jammy? What do you do that exposes your system to that level of spy/adware?

Tis not my systems, tis the doofusi at work. And a few friends that can't keep out of the pr0n sites. My record is 1506 items found in Ad-aware and another dozen or so found with MS ASW after Ad-aware was done. That particular system was so bad that I used EVERY single trick in the book and still couldn't get it clean. Ad-aware, Hijack This, Spybot, MS, Spy sweeper, uninstalls, reg hacks ... nothing could get it clean expect ....

Format C:
Yes

My system is spotless.

Jammrock

[VJ]

if you want to scan a system easily: HitmanPro

http://www.hitmanpro.nl/

The main interface it Dutch though. Hitman launches a number of other known softwares (Spybot, CWShredder, ...) one after the other to detect as much as possible.

While it is great to scan a system you are not familiar with, I do prefer to have the individual softwares on my PC (more control over the options).


Jörg

[Kurt]

Do you know whether they updated to Spybot 1.4 and Spywareblaster 3.4?

[Jammrock]

Do you know whether they updated to Spybot 1.4 and Spywareblaster 3.4?

Spybot 1.4 final was released last week.

Ad-aware SE 1.06 was released last week as well.

No clue about Spywareblaster.

[UtwigMU]

I thought this was some kind of those silly "Which spyware program are you?" polls