Effectiveness

[Clement Kichuk]

I have been running Antispyware for about 3 weeks. I
have realtime protection activated and perform a full
system scan each evening. Thus far the software has
detected two pieces of spyware during the full scan and
shows no spyware blocked in real time. Several times I
have run an Ad-ware scan immediately after the
Antispyware scan. Ad-ware consistantly detects 10 plus
pieces of spyware even though Antispyware software
reports the system is clean.

Is there some setting I need to know about. According to
Antispyware there isn't much spyware out there.

Regards
Clement Kichuk

 

[R. McCarty]

Spyware is a nebulous thing. There's not a global table of what is
and is not Spyware. So all the tools have differing definitions of
what to look for. Also, the threats morph all the time so what it
finds today, may change tomorrow.
It's just not possible to have a single tool that comprehensively
cleans a system. In fact the "Cleaning" approach is really not the
best way. It's better to "Harden" the PC or tweak Cookie settings
and Security Zones to prevent the stuff from ever getting onto the
PC to begin with.
So for now, it's a cocktail of AdAware, Spybot, MS-ASW & a
number of other on-line tools to fight off pests.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Clement--in this beta build, cookies are not scanned or removed. This
accounts for much of the difference in detection between Microsoft
Antispyware and other reputable tools.