D
DigitalTwister
I am an IT Tech that works daily with spyware and
viruses. Not a few but A LOT of them. The tools that work
are Adaware,MS Anti-Spyware, and Spybot in that order.
Spyware scans are like virus scans, not any one program
will get everything.
A good example is a machine that I recently cleaned.
AdAware found and cleaned about 600 objects. I then ran
MS Anti-Spyware and it found over 51,000 files.
Impressive but impractical. Ended up finding the folders
and manually deleting the files.
If you have multiple accounts on your machine, guess
what, you have to scan each account because it is it's
own seperate virtual machine(a concept that has been
around since at least WIN95).
The best anti-spyware is education and responsibility.
If you were to drive your car to any large city and park
the car in a part of town that is known to be a high
crime area and 1.Leave the car unlocked with the keys in
the ignition 2. Walk around the area looking for the
address or business you want asking anyone you see for
directions, or 3. Going into any building that is open to
you, the result would not be the positive result you
expected.
Fairly uneducated and irresponsible actions.
However, with the same scenario, if you were find the
first policeman and asked, "Where is it safe to park and
exactly where is this "location"--your experience would
be much safer and more positive.
Once you have cleaned you computer, if you go where you
have been you will get what you got. It's that simple.
MS Anti-Spyware is one of the best--it's biggest plus is
the large database of signatures and even bigger is the
ability to end processes and clean the threat.
Downfalls are that you cannot stop the scan part way
through and clean what has been found--many times this is
needed because of the inter dependence of the files and
indescriminate removal of files and registry keys causing
the system to be unstartable after the cleanup--even in
safe mode. I have had to perform system repair installs
on many machines after using MS Anti-Spyware.
The only reason I am posting some of this here is that I
cannot find a link to report on beta issues with the prog
directly.
To Bill Gates:
You have a high quality tool that will benefit the
world. If you want to integrate this with future
releases of Windows, fantastic.
On behalf of all the users on planet earth, please keep
this tool available at no cost. The benefits to the End
User, IT Professionals, and Microsoft will be far greater
than you could imagine.
viruses. Not a few but A LOT of them. The tools that work
are Adaware,MS Anti-Spyware, and Spybot in that order.
Spyware scans are like virus scans, not any one program
will get everything.
A good example is a machine that I recently cleaned.
AdAware found and cleaned about 600 objects. I then ran
MS Anti-Spyware and it found over 51,000 files.
Impressive but impractical. Ended up finding the folders
and manually deleting the files.
If you have multiple accounts on your machine, guess
what, you have to scan each account because it is it's
own seperate virtual machine(a concept that has been
around since at least WIN95).
The best anti-spyware is education and responsibility.
If you were to drive your car to any large city and park
the car in a part of town that is known to be a high
crime area and 1.Leave the car unlocked with the keys in
the ignition 2. Walk around the area looking for the
address or business you want asking anyone you see for
directions, or 3. Going into any building that is open to
you, the result would not be the positive result you
expected.
Fairly uneducated and irresponsible actions.
However, with the same scenario, if you were find the
first policeman and asked, "Where is it safe to park and
exactly where is this "location"--your experience would
be much safer and more positive.
Once you have cleaned you computer, if you go where you
have been you will get what you got. It's that simple.
MS Anti-Spyware is one of the best--it's biggest plus is
the large database of signatures and even bigger is the
ability to end processes and clean the threat.
Downfalls are that you cannot stop the scan part way
through and clean what has been found--many times this is
needed because of the inter dependence of the files and
indescriminate removal of files and registry keys causing
the system to be unstartable after the cleanup--even in
safe mode. I have had to perform system repair installs
on many machines after using MS Anti-Spyware.
The only reason I am posting some of this here is that I
cannot find a link to report on beta issues with the prog
directly.
To Bill Gates:
You have a high quality tool that will benefit the
world. If you want to integrate this with future
releases of Windows, fantastic.
On behalf of all the users on planet earth, please keep
this tool available at no cost. The benefits to the End
User, IT Professionals, and Microsoft will be far greater
than you could imagine.