This will be a short review of some of the leading anti-spyware solutions. Mostly the talk will be about good or bad things and things they should improve. Nor will I touch some of subjects that might be important for some of the users.
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So, what constitutes good spyware remover? In my opinion, the most important thing is not number of parasites it removes, but how fast it reacts for new important parasites. This is true for all 3 parties in this story: affiliate, manufacturer and end-user. However, it’s a bit different what the important parasites are.
Manufacturers have no time to fully check and add all the spyware that is emerging, although some of them try to do so. They risk on adding parasites that noone uses that much, that are not widely spread. However, they want to increase the numbers they show on their frontpage too. Some of them try to do this artificially (rogues), some of them add easy “parasites” like tracking cookies just to maintain the image that they are capable on finding something (especially when there is nothing else to be found). They need the reputation of being biggest, fastest, best and so on.
The hype after spyware is on the downturn, and the most important parasites for the end-user are not the ones that steal information and spy on you, but the ones that you see most. Funny enough, the most seen parasites are fake removers themselves (also called rogue, PUA, malware, corrupt, etc). Who cares nowadays about rootkits and keyloggers? Probably business people only or dudes that try to hide what they do on the net from their wife. Also, end user does not care that much about the Trojans that are responsible for bringing the parasites on your system. Or spam bots… Except when they disturb they torrent downloads.
So who’s doing good or bad?
Lets start with the oldie free SpyBot S&D. It might sound harsh, but I am not planning installing it on any of my PC, even if I might suggest it as alternative for others. Why it is so for such a highly rated remover? Well… It is driven by community. And it gained both best and worst from this fact. It has passionate developers that believe to know too well what is right and wrong. And here are the problem 😉 This remover is clear example how one can focus on adding software that is neither harmful nor dangerous in their removal list, feeling legitimate on doing so and still miss parasites that are important. For example they still try to remove newest version of spyware remover spyhunter, which comes with uninstaller and is assumed to be legitimate remover, but entered Virus Heat on 20 days later than us, a long while after the infections started. Good Job!
SuperAntiSpyware. I like it. I really like it, though not their affiliate system :). Why is that, you might ask ? Well… Free edition is quite good, even better than their comparison shows. It is one of the best runners up in the market. Currently, I am waiting for a new version of it and we will see how much better it got.
CounterSpy . Despite good ratings, I have a feeling that this software has some updating problems as well. I hope they will fix them.
Malwarebytes anti-malware. Same category as superantispyware, however their free edition is somewhat weaker. Paid edition gives lots of promise. It is quite a nice tool overall. It is heavily promoted in bleepingcomputers.com, I assume they have some standing deal or belong to the same people, but that’s not so important.
Spyware Doctor Well, this software is very good, as it has quite small update time. Much better than Spybot. Probably the best paid remover.
SpywareSweeper. I do not understand these guys. They change affiliate system without a warning and often do only country –specific promotions through affiliates. They forget to warn affiliates about changes (or we missed it). Product is nice though, but would not say that better then SpywareDoctor both from user and affiliate view. That’s why I see less promotion of it on the net.
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