My anti-spyware adventure.

I decided it was time to buy some anti-spyware protection. I have been using Spybot, but as someone pointed out somewhere on a web page I trawled through, the bad guys aren't part-timers, and you need an equivalent level of defence.
Top10 Reviews lists Spy Sweeper as its gold medal choice, with CounterSpy taking the silver. My experience leaves me unimpressed with both. First of all, I thought I was getting a trial download of Spy Sweeper from Tucows. Straight away when it's installed however I get a message that my trial period is done and it's time to pay. There's a 30-day refund option so I wasn't bothered about that. But their payment system refused my credit card three times. I tried to find a contact link, and all I got were technical support options. Spy Sweeper got swept!
CounterSpy was even worse. First of all, the download was about 35MB. I had to look twice to be sure I was reading the number correctly, but there it was. So I download, and then I get the updates. That was about ten hours in total of computer time, because I'd used up all my fast broadband time - but the best was yet to come: I tried to open My Pictures and My Documents, and nothing happened. Then I started having trouble with Mozilla and Opera. After a couple of hours it reached a point where hardly anything was working! I uninstalled the program, and the screen was flooded with the stuff I'd been trying to access and a dozen or more error messages. Goodbye, CounterSpy. And while I'm at it...
Finally it looks as if I've got something good. I've set up AVG Anti-spyware, and it seems to be cruising along nicely. The download was about 6.5MB, and the updates took only a few minutes. I'd say at this point that I'll be sticking with it.

I have never ever seen the kind of issues that you mention. Generally, AVG Anti-Spyware can safely co-exist with all the tools discussed below. No one tool can be a complete solution all by itself.

I initially put Spy Sweeper on my son's laptop to help prevent the kind of issues that youth inevitably get into. Also put it on my wife's laptop because of internet banking issues. I really have not had any personal issues with those installs and updates - although there was suspected and reported serious upgrade issues for selected PCs when v4.0 was first issued (not for ours, however). I don't like their lack of a suitable trial period - from time to time there are trial versions for one to two weeks. Such inconsistency and arrogance is why the spyware community does not make specific use of that tool.


I and many others have had users make use of CounterSpy without any sign of the issues that you note.



One step that I now always do is disable any user installed security options (but never antivirus - sometimes a firewall can be a deal breaker) and any running applications (most installs advise of this) in case that might interfere with the installation of any major software. That is potentially the source of your issues. Always advisable to download from the vendor's site, where possible.


'Spyware Doctor' is generally considered another strong choice candidate although in my PAST trials (and as reported by others) I did find several serious false positive reporting issues (detected malware where none existed).


Generally, I do not now trust any tool without researching further and definately seeking a second opinion (or that a backup will be available for any removed FILES). This is easy to do for myself because a critical infection on my PCs is usually very rare. Furthermore, I can be quite confident that my PCs are generally in pristine shape malware wise (always another possible source of interference). Finally, if an infection is that serious, another REPUTABLE tool will also have something to say about it.


Some tools I consider to be very sloppy. Several days ago, I had one tool find 2.EXE on my primary PC and tell me it was a backdoor trojan (a very serious issue - OMG). However, quite a few second string, but promising, tools will accept a filename as a defacto infection indicator, and some go further and at least verify that the FILE PATH in question matches the known infection possibility. The best tools go even further and verify FILE SIZE and/or even test execute the file in protected mode to verify without question.

Upon initial investigation, I immediately found that the particular suspected infection would be picked up by my antivirus tool NOD32 - something certainly not right here. The known infection is 56KB in size whereas my file was over 10MB - plus was in the wrong FILE PATH to be expected. I investigated the file properties (right click). On the 'Version' TAB I was able to determine the original filename and was further able to determine what legitimate application that file was for (PALTALK).

__________________
Vincent P

MALWARE: READ FIRST Procedures:
|_ SpyBot V1.5 _|_ HijackThis LOG __V2.0.2 _|

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I was surprised myself, but as I say, once it was gone the comp behaved normally again.
I chose AVG because I have used the ewido online scan several times for a 'second opinion', and it has picked up a couple of nasties acquired through file sharing programs. It appears to have settled in nicely with NOD32 and BlackICE.