Spyware and Tested Products

What about Trojans, Spyware and Malware.  Especially since pests are becoming very prevalent on the internet and are causing systems to slow down and act very strange as if the machine has a virus.  We recommend five products and they are EMSI Software's A-Squared, Sunbelt Software's Counter Spy (Formerly Giant Software's package with a major rewrite), XOFTSPY from ParetoLogic, Ewido (Trojan Protection),  Spyware Doctor from PC Tools.   All of these products are commercial products.  The best packages in detection and cleaning are the ZoneAlarm and CounterSpy products.  Ewido was on the top until recently when it was tested and did not pick up as much as it used to.  We have discovered through testing that Trend Micro's product is not usefull and did not catch a majority of the spyware .  Keep in mind the Trend's Office Scan is a business product that requires a server.   Trend's product is the only product that has Checkmark certification from West Coast Labs and at this point we are concerned that this certification is to make sure the product does not catch spyware.  On the Shareware side is Spybot Search and Destroy which has done a good job in detection but not as good on the removal side.  On a negative note Microsoft has a really good product that is free, but it signature database is falling behind on detection of true threats but currently detects the SONY rootkit which is a good thing.     Trojans, spyware and especially pests are not always detected by anti-virus products as they are not viruses.  However they can do severe damage to your system and allow others to use your machine to attack others.  Plus they allow for an un-ending stream of advertising popups to clutter your computer screen.  Often they are triggered by going to a web site that you allow a download to happen or you loaded some fancy tool bar or weather application or nifty windows cursor as well as music sharing software.  Many of them are trojans so they can flood you with popups and load other pests as well.  To protect yourself we highly recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox as your brower and setting it as your default browser, but since you will need to use Internet Explorer to do update scans from Microsoft use the registry patches from Spywareguide and do it often.

Why use software to clean your system?  The other choice is to fdisk and format your disk, reload your OS.  Then start reloading all your software and hope you have good backups to restore your files.  We do not feel this is a good solution.  Yes, you are correct that there is not a single software package out there that does a complete clean.  But if you use at least three of the tools we list below in combination your system can be cleaned.

On another quick note two of the major ISP's (AOL and Earthlink) are advertising that they provide customers with antispyware, antivirus... In our field work some of the worst infected machines we have seen have had their "protection" but what do you get for free anyway.

Spyware Prevention and Removal  (Note:  We recommend getting these products even if you are running Firefox)

• No product takes the top spot as they all let a system get infected and none did a complete job of cleaning

• EMSI A-Squared (Great detector and cleaner)

• CounterSpy (good commercial package catch rate is good)

• Spyware Doctor (good commercial package)

• XOFTSPY (good commercial product)

• Ewido Anti-Malware Plus (Good Commercial Product, recent downgrade in rating due to missed detection)

• Spysweeper (good commercial product)

• ZoneAlarm (Best Firewall, AntiVirus and Antispyware downgraded to less than OK)

• CA Pest Patrol (Good but misses many of the dangerous items)

• Spy-Bot Search and Destroy (good freeware)

• StopZilla (High amount of False Positives, but good detection not for the average user)

• SpyCatcher (High amount of False Positives, but good detection, not for the average user)

• AdAware (If you have a major spyware outbreak this product does not work, plus it does not have any real

  Trend Micro Office Scan 7 (great antivirus but low spyware detection rate)

• Trend Micro Anti-Spyware (good product for Home and SMB low spyware detection)

•  SpywareGuide KillBit Fixes (Good prevention)

• Microsoft's Defender (Decent Product), bad detection, most spyware is not detected

• McAfee Internet Security Suite (Suite covering all areas, low detection of spyware does not clean up trojans well in fact would detect spyware as a cleaning program was running removing the infection)

• Norton Internet Security Worst detection product we have tested.  Must user complaints with the highest amount of infection of spyware and no cleanup.

Lorimer Network Research, Inc is an Information Technology Consulting Company based in Ouray County Colorado and serves clients in Ouray, Ridgway, Telluride, Montrose, Denver, Colorado Springs.  Our local service covers Ouray County, Montrose County, Delta County, San Miguel County with highly qualified engineers who care deeply about our clients.