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Anti-Spyware Products Don't Live Up to Promises
John Wells writes "In the December, 2004 issue of PC World, the author of an article titled Poor Defenders concludes that most commercial anti-spyware software is ineffective. In tests using a fresh install of XP and 6 typical spyware infections the commercial software failed to stack up against freeware competitor Spybot Search and Destroy. Four out of seven commercial products failed to remove any of the infections. One product even installed 57 spyware files itself! Conclusion: Use freeware products like Spybot and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Personal."
I find running both of these and using the yahoo spyware blocker is pretty effective. The yahoo thing doesn't catch all of them but I notice the # found by spybot and ad-aware went down quite a bit after installing it. FYI, if anyone hasn't upgraded to 1.05 of ad-aware I recommend doing so. I found about 30 more spyware programs on my Mom's computer after the upgrade after scanning with the most up to date definitions on 1.03.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
Yeah, it's free, and it's great for people that have a "Clue". It's not so good for people that don't have any idea of what they are doing with a computer.
;)
Most people don't have a Clue and they don't want to. That's why they are infected with Spyware in the first place. I would NEVER recommend hijackThis to anyone except someone I was KNEW was very good with computers and what they should and should not see running.
While it is difficult to get Spyware when you can't start your computer correctly it is also annoying
This is a dangerous trend. Given the majority of these ad/spyware companies don't care what their products do to the "users" computer, they can leave security holes unnoticed and allow exploits without the user even knowing there is a flaw in their computer. Windows updates can only do so much, and with companies releasing software that intends to help the user, but instead can hurt them. All the while the user is unaware. This makes me sick. Let's support the companies that work off of donations and have open source programs. This is the only way to prevent this from spreading to all of the favorite anit-ad/spyware programs.
The fundamental difference between freeware and proprietry anti-malware software is that the freeware are doing it for the love of the game, or in this case their hatred for spyware in all its daemonic forms.
Commerical anti-spyware vendors on the other hand are in in for the $$$ and that means they are susseptable to temptation, i.e allow malwarez who give them money to get through, use malwarez tactics to get money and do things other than what it says on the tin while users aren't looking.(read, kazaa)
I suppose commerical vendors are just more idealogically close to the spammers, who are also in it for the money.
In any case, if you need an 'infrastructural' type software program, your nearly always better off going FOSS anyway. That's my 2c.
May the Maths Be with you!
I think that it might have something to do with the phrase 'anti-competitive lawsuit.'
No spyware is not an OS problem, I have Windows machines, I use IE, I do not have a spyware problem. My girlfriend runs Windows, she uses IE, she does not have a spyware problem, and while I may be catagorized as more cluefull then the average user, she is the average user excepting for one thing, she actually learned how to use her computer. Do you consider a person refusing to clean their duct work, or take their car in for a tune up a problem with the house or the car? No its the users fault, and its the same with spyware. How long have people been told, don't click on everything you see? Don't open that mail? Hell its even on the news now. This is a problem with people activly refusing to learn. Spyware writers do not target Windows, they target IDIOTS. There are spyware apps that target Mozilla that do things they shouldn't, so why are there not more? The target is idiots, thats why, you will see more and more targeting Mozilla as more and more of the target audience are convinced to use it.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
There are some systemic problems with Windows, particularly the Windows/IE combination, that allow spyware to flourish -- the lack of a way for a common user to get a good idea what's running on their system besides MS-installed OS files, for example, or the multitude of places that auto-starting spyware can hide its startup away from the user's notice. But in the end the people who have spyware problems are almost universally the people who clicked on a link from an unknown source that promised them something cool (or more often than not, something astonishingly lame by more educated users' standards..) If your momand other users like her could be trained not to click on "Click here to install our FREE animated weather-forecasting dancing baby!" when she doesn't know anything about the source of the offer, 90% of the problem would go away overnight.
Probably got to the point where pop ups from spyware infected computers were making people think twice about windows as an os
Haha. As if people actually knew was an OS was...
The real reason MS hasn't created a spyware blocker? Because peanut galleries like Slashdot would go up in arms about how MS is trying to "take over another market", cry about unfair competition, whine about too much bloat, etc. I mean, just look at how Slashdotters whined and cried like a bunch of 4 year olds this morning when Microsoft announced they were entering the blog publishing realm. When you're Microsoft, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
At the support center that I work at, we do pretty much the exact same thing - 90% of our calls are related to spyware. One thing you didn't mention above that you may want to consider is Bart PE. It is a bootable windows xp cd that can run ad-aware, clamwin, mcafee, and f-prot. It can also connect to the internet and download updates for each of these apps. You can then tell these apps to scan & disinfect the person's hard drive. We have found that if we run bartpe right away on any computer we get in, we can save ourselves tons of time because it knocks out all the nasty spyware, trojans, and viruses right from the start.