I have always found SpyBot (SB) to be a very valuable tool. Of late, several issues have made SB less effective, less helpful. It and similar tools have the potential to create an outright false sense of security - especially in cases of multiple user profiles.
Our family (and my home office) runs three (3) main user profiles and four (4) minimal specific purpose profiles on a WIN98 machine. Unfortunately, a scan of any one given profile does not ensure that other profiles are similarly free and clear.
Excessive Resource Load:
I have verified a 40% resource hit (512 MB RAM) on each of the 3 main profiles.
If I run SpywareBlaster from within SB, a critically low resource warning occurs.
Less helpful RECOVERY (and problem audit trail/history):
The recovery area seems to (now) record only 'registry' entries. Other tools provide a complete history and pattern recognition opportunities. I had tended to run SB mainly and always first. I may now be forced to chose AdAware or PestPatrol first in order to get a better and more complete audit trail.
SpyBot appears to be mainly USER PROFILE SPECIFIC:
I noticed that each user profile clearly indicated a need to be independently 'immunized'.
Only registry entries pertaining to the 'current user' get scanned because part of the registry is user profile specific (USER.DAT).
Also, many spyware items (cookies, registry entries) that appear in one profile may also be (often are) present in each of the other profiles. Failure to run SB on each profile allows one or more profiles to remain vulnerable or unsanitized by SB.
Since passwords for all user profiles are not generally known to other users, no one user may be in the position to ensure that SB is run against all user profiles. Also, I do regularly check my main profiles, but may forget to check on a rarely used profile. Do I really want to run SB seven (7) times - got to love the MS registry concept?
User profile issues are probably not unique to SB - so beware.
Our family (and my home office) runs three (3) main user profiles and four (4) minimal specific purpose profiles on a WIN98 machine. Unfortunately, a scan of any one given profile does not ensure that other profiles are similarly free and clear.
Excessive Resource Load:
I have verified a 40% resource hit (512 MB RAM) on each of the 3 main profiles.
If I run SpywareBlaster from within SB, a critically low resource warning occurs.
Less helpful RECOVERY (and problem audit trail/history):
The recovery area seems to (now) record only 'registry' entries. Other tools provide a complete history and pattern recognition opportunities. I had tended to run SB mainly and always first. I may now be forced to chose AdAware or PestPatrol first in order to get a better and more complete audit trail.
SpyBot appears to be mainly USER PROFILE SPECIFIC:
I noticed that each user profile clearly indicated a need to be independently 'immunized'.
Only registry entries pertaining to the 'current user' get scanned because part of the registry is user profile specific (USER.DAT).
Also, many spyware items (cookies, registry entries) that appear in one profile may also be (often are) present in each of the other profiles. Failure to run SB on each profile allows one or more profiles to remain vulnerable or unsanitized by SB.
Since passwords for all user profiles are not generally known to other users, no one user may be in the position to ensure that SB is run against all user profiles. Also, I do regularly check my main profiles, but may forget to check on a rarely used profile. Do I really want to run SB seven (7) times - got to love the MS registry concept?
User profile issues are probably not unique to SB - so beware.