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Anti-Spyware program 3

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UNIX72

IS-IT--Management
Sep 8, 2000
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Running 40 XP/2000 computers ,need a good anti-spyware plus hopefully anti-browswer hijack program. What's the best software out there? Please advise, thank you.
 
Im using Mozilla Firefox more and more it is free and has a lot of nice features, automatic popup blocker etc. I also use Thunderbird E-Mail. I also have IE and Outlook Express that come in handy in certain cases. You might take a look at Spybot and Adaware both free spyware detectors. I use them both, one might miss what the other catches. Since Firefox is a Java system it should stop a lot of that ad ware, (I think).
Hope this helps.
 
PC Magazine reviews have tended to favor the following two (2) products:

August 2004

Spy Sweeper (freeware without live update option or $30 and yearly subscription renewal fees)
Spybot (freeware)

Having said that, read their introductory comments (March 2004):


"Let's be clear: None of the applications we tested for this roundup hit the ball out of the park in terms of detecting and removing the adware, Trojan horses, key loggers, and hosts of other assorted nasties that make up the unpleasant category of applications known as spyware. They're not yet as good at their jobs as antivirus programs are, but they're nearly as important to have on your PC."

Many people on this board tend to favour freeware options such as SpyBot and AdAware. Many of us also tend to run at least two (2) of these tools if not even a third. Each tool seems to have a special niche that they excel in (cookies, registry, and completeness of file removal). This leaves no confidence that one tool is clearly the 'one' to go with. Most people would not be willing to pay good money for a tool that could miss any one substantive area of concern.

Furthermore, most of the popular tools are currently less convenient in terms of corporate rollout and update maintenance logistics, and execution in command line parameters. I would gladly pay for a tools that work as smooth as some of the Anti-Virus auto-update features. This is where Spy Sweeper appears to stands out.
 
We have about 2800 2K/XP computers at my work, and we use Ad-aware 6.0 and Spybot 1.3 to remedy computers with spyware. To try to limit spyware we use internet filters. We also use Trend Micro for our virus scan right now and they are going to be producing a spyware protection feature on an upcoming version.
 
Having used Firefox for the last week or so I agree with billy. It just doesn't suffer a lot of the problems that beset IE. Using all these IE add-ons, worthy as they are, are just patching something that is basically broken. It also has a lot of really handy features, clicking the mousewheel to open a hyperlink in a new tab is just so useful.

 
I would point out one thing that may not have been clear in other posts. The free version of AdAware is not legal for business use. <sigh> I wish it was.
 
Thanks everybody for the advice, I have already been using adware 6.0, i really need something else. Thanks again.
 
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