I am about to buy any anti-spyware/adware software for my laptop…
I would like to find out about nearly all the spyware and adware scanners and not just the free ones.
Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy are the ones I use… I haven’t had any problems with Spyware for a long time… they usually just pick up cookies.
in most cases, the free ones work as good or better then the ones you pay for… I also use spybot, and ad-aware. Run them both, and they pickup everything.
there isn’t one program that will detect all adware/spyware, like said above ad-aware and spybot search and destroy are 2 very good free programs. another free program is microsoft antispyware, i don’t think it is as thorough in finding as ad-aware or spybot, but it is good at detecting and stopping most before they install/spread.
I tried the microsoft spyware removal tool, and i found that it really bogged down my system. Also the scan took 3 times longer than spybot, and didnt pick up anything… I ran spybot and ad-aware right after and they picked up a ton of stuff.
i like ewido security suite. install the demo, update it, run it. Finds lots of shit the others don’t. Then remove it cuz you need horsepower more than you need to know instantly if something’s spyware. Better to find it later so you can go “Duhh!” to yourself when no one’s around…
I tried that one, and it only found stuff right at the start, never after that. I guess that’s a good thing… but the trial wasn’t quite long enough.
Any one use HijackThis ? I like this program and SpyBot…
brilliant!
I currently use spybot and it picks up a lot of things, i dont like ‘hijack-this’ because of rumors that it leaks info about your computer to the authors
Never heard that about it, why would the authors care?
HiJack This! is good, but you have to know a fair amount to use it. It only shows stuff and you have to figure out what to fix/delete. If regedit worries you, don’t use it.
CWShredder is a tool to keep handy too. CW, MyWeb, WinTools and Lop gotta be the most annoying things ever unleashed… and that frikkin MSN toolbar
CWShredder,
What was this program again what did it do… I’ve seen it but forgot…
so ya, i just use ad-aware. should i get spybot too? or is ad-aware alone good enough?
I use both ad-aware and spybot. They are both the best ones out there. So it doesn’t hurt to use multiple anit-syware. Just don’t use multiple virus scanners. Bad bad thing 2do.
What’s so bad about having more than one virus scanner?
[quote=“zK.k31k1.h1X”]
What’s so bad about having more than one virus scanner?[/quote]
That fact that your machine would be unusable.
…well…at least there’d be no viruses? 
LOL
oh, and this is just a joke so nobody start bitching at me about some techie mumbo-jumbo.
i just downloaded spybot. i ran it and it found a bunch of stuff. then i ran ad-aware and it found 4 more things. so i guess they won’t catch EVERYTHING and it’s best to have more than one.
what about microsoft antispyware
As i mentioned earlier, I’ve tried the microsoft spyware tool, and I didn’t see anything that made it stand out from the other tools… In fact I had better search results using Spybot, and ad-aware, then the microsoft tool. Of course the microsoft one is still in development stages, and the other two programs have been around for a couple years, giving them time to work out all the bugs, and get better results.
It’s about as useful as anything else by MSoft. 
I just love the mail filter in Outllook 2003. Every morning I delete 30 mssgs about ‘become an FBI agent’. Next day there’s 30 more, too stupid to figure it out by subject. Outlook 2000 w SpamBayes plugin worked better.