Friday, January 28, 2005

Disturbing Anti-SpyWare Article

The latest "Windows Secrets" newsletter has an article in it by Brian Livingston that gives a thorough and somewhat disturbing report on some popular anti-spyware applications. You can read more here:

Anti-adware misses most malware, By Brian Livingston

You might need to scroll down a bit to get to the article. The gist is that many of the popular Anti-Spyware programs we've all come to use regularly, including SpyBot and Ad-Aware, aren't too good these days at ferreting out those dastardly little applets that unscrupulous companies sometimes install on your system without your knowledge.

Fortunately, he also rates some newer programs that score better. In particular, Microsoft's AntiSpyware (Beta) scored well. I downloaded it myself and tried it - it found a rather nasty little Internet Explorer hijaaking program that both Spybot and Ad-Aware could not remove completely. In 20 minutes, the little booger was removed and my IE settings restored to normal.

Download the program and try it out. You will need to validate your legal copy of Windows by inputting your certification number (located either on your Windows CD package or on a tag on your PC if it was factory-installed).

I give it a Highly Recommended.


1 Comments:

Blogger BethPowell said...

I also have tried Microsoft's Anti-Spyware at my office and found it worked well.

It is for this very reason that I do not use Microsoft products at home for email or internet access. I use Firefox and Thunderbird. I included some information on this in my blog (Beth's CAD Blog).

I don't have anything against Bill Gates, but in my business I see more Autodesk product related support calls that are really spyware problems lately.

Just my 2 cents. Thanks for a great blog!

12:27 PM  

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