Anti-Spyware program?

[Hand of Evil]

I try to keep a number of defenses up.

Ad-Ware
Spybot - Search & destroy
ZoneAlarm
Virus Protection
Pop-Up Blocker (Earthlink service)
Spyware Blocker (Earthlink service)​

 

[Aesmael]

The single best thing you can do to protect yourself from getting hit by this stuff in the first place is to not use Internet Explorer. Download Firefox or Opera. It takes a little time to wean yourself off of IE, but everyone I know who has is glad they did.

Thanks again folks. That's something else I have been considering, though no plans to make the switch just yet. Currently I am leaning towards Firefox.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Currently I am leaning towards Firefox.

Certainly can't beat the price.

 

[Wraith Form]

I work for Gateway tech support; I've seen what spyware can do to a PC, and the level of frustration it produces in their owners...and it ain't pretty. You'll read the following and say I'm paranoid, but my PCs run smooth, clean and virus/spyware free.

Gateway sells SpySweeper, and indeed it seems to be very good. (I was initially doubtful, but when I installed it at home and SpySweeper found more crap than Ad Aware and half the other sketchy "anti-spyware tools" out there, I was convinced.)

I also use SpyBot S&D. I run SpySweeper & SpyBot once a week, back-to-back (after ensuring that they've been fully updated). Then I turn off my PC, reboot and run 'em again. (Some spyware can be flushed out with a reboot.)

Once a month I'll even fire up Ad Aware just to see if it can find something that the other two can't.

This is on top of Norton Internet Security 2005 (which isn't too shab), Mozilla Firefox and a router w/ hardware firewall.

There's no playing around with spyware--it's highly pervasive, exceptionally sophisticated and damn stubborn to remove, and I have no intention of reformatting my hard drive because of it..!

 

[DM]

Faronics

I know it may be inconvient at times, but I'd check out Deep Freeze at http://www.faronics.com/ . Although it won't prevent these programs from installing, it's reall easy to get rid of them once they have. All you need to do is reboot your computer.

 

[Gilwen]

If you use Spybot search and destory besure to get version 1.3 and download the updates. You will also want to run it in Advanced mode and add Spybots host file listings to the host list on your local machine (just a click of a button to add or delete). This will give the added benefit of keeping known bad websites from resolving.

2 pesos,

Gil

 

[EricNoah]

I use Spy Subtract (along with Ad Subtract for web blocking) -- keeps most spyware from getting on in the first place. I ran it for a couple of months, then ran AdAware (as a comparison) and it found only 1 tracking cookie that managed to get through in all that time, and no spyware aps.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I know it may be inconvient at times, but I'd check out Deep Freeze at http://www.faronics.com/ . Although it won't prevent these programs from installing, it's reall easy to get rid of them once they have. All you need to do is reboot your computer.

The only problem with Deep Freeze is that you can't save anything to your HD unless you set up seperate partitions. When you reboot, every change made to the HD is wiped out to the default that you set up when it was installed. We use Deep Freeze at the library for the public computers, but wouldn't dream of putting it on staff PCs, since you can't save anything locally.