Just a few years ago, all we had to worry about were
viruses and spam. Lately, however, spyware has become every bit the
nuisance that its two cousins have been, if not more so. In addition to
supplying unscrupulous vendors with information about you and your
computers, Spyware can slow your system to a crawl, ruin your registry,
or, in some cases, crash Windows altogether.
In this edition of
Windows Advisor, we'll explore the various programs that can detect and
defeat spyware, as well as one program that enables you to find and
delete bad shortcuts and defeat the effects of sloppy programming on
your Windows PC.
Be ad-aware
Arguably the
best known anti-spyware program available, Ad-Aware (from
Lavasoft) protects your computer not only by periodically scanning for
existing threats but also by installing a de facto firewall called Ad
Watch that keeps spyware from ever installing itself onto your system to
begin with.
The program can detect spyware running in memory,
block browser hijackers, remove tracking cookies, fix registry changes,
clean startup settings, and more. And while the clunky interface
identifies it as one of the first anti-spyware programs, the program is,
for the most part, easy to configure and use while also having many
customizable options for the power users among us.
Scanning is
fast, taking less than six minutes on my 200GB hard drive, but does
require a lot of CPU cycles, making whatever else you're running on your
PC sluggish until the scan is complete. In my tests, the program found
25 objects that had been infected, including two registry keys and 23
programs. And when it does find problems, the program gives you the
option of deleting or quarantining them, in the event that you aren't
sure about something and want to check it out before zapping
it.
The program comes in a variety of flavors, including Ad-Aware
Personal, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. The Personal version is
free, while Plus costs $32 and Professional will run you $40. Enterprise
is for businesses and the cost depends upon your number of PCs and the
employees using them.
Steaming mad at bugs
PC Bug
Doctor , which also helps you to clean up unused shortcuts and
icons, is just as easy to use as Ad Aware but doesn't offer quite as
many customizable options. It also doesn't offer live protection against
new spyware, but does allow you to schedule periodic automatic system
scans for, say, three in the morning, when it won't interfere with your
work.
Scanning under PC Bug Doctor is slightly slower, taking
almost ten minutes to perform the task, but doesn't hog the CPU like
Ad-Aware does, which means you can let it run in the background while
continuing to work in Windows.
In my tests, PC Bug Doctor found
620 errors, 429 of them being missing shortcuts. It also included 144
CLSID (Class Identifier) errors, which is an ID for an ActiveX or OLE
2.0 object which is missing. Of the spyware that Ad-Aware found, PC Bug
Doctor found both of the infected registry entries but only two of the
programs.
If you're going to use PC Bug Doctor, we'd also
recommend using another anti-spyware program in conjunction with it,
since the program's main strength lies more in finding problems caused
by program glitches and spyware rather than the spyware itself. The
program at costs $20 to use for a month, $60 to use for a year, or $130
for lifetime use of the software.
Spying on the spyware
SpyBot
is every bit as clunky as Ad-Aware, if not more so, and works in much
the same way. The program does allow you to identify specific threats
(i.e., a WebTrends Live tracking cookie) and decide individually whether
or not to delete them, rather than zapping or quarantining everything in
one fell swoop. And if you use Internet Explorer, the software will help
you to "immunize" your browser against malicious websites by blocking
access to any pages known to contain spyware.
In my tests, SpyBot
found every one of the corrupted files that Ad-Aware did, but only one
of the two affected registry entries. However, because it identified the
threats, I was able to deal with them more effectively than simply
blanket deleting everything. The entire scan took seven minutes, and
didn't seem to affect the speed of the other programs running
concurrently with the scan. Searching for updates to the database,
however, took thirty minutes, presumably because other users were
updating at the same time, causing a lag on SpyBot's
servers.
SpyBot is donation-ware, which means that while you
should pay for it if you use and enjoy it, you don't have
to.
Which one should you use?
Our best
advice? At least two of them. Spyware is so unpredictable that it's
almost impossible for one program to catch it all. By using two or more
anti-spyware suites, running concurrently, you'll have the best chance
of catching intrusive cookies, registry-altering programs, and malicious
macros and of keeping your Windows PC infection-free. Inoculate now,
(against viruses as well as spyware) and save money on PC repair bills
later.
Contributing Editor Joe DeRouen writes Windows
Advisor monthly for ComputerUser.
