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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.
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!
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.