What Anti-Spyware Program do you use for active monitoring?

LilKitty

This poll might have been done before but I'm not aware of it.
I'm only talking about the program you use at startup with a resident shield enabled, since many people have at least 2 of these programs installed and use the others as scanners only.

Tried to cover the main ones and there's only 10 spaces and one of them needs to cover the rest.

Ruu_Old

Teatimer and AVG Anti-spyware (due to run out shortly).

LilKitty

Ruu wrote:

Teatimer and AVG Anti-spyware (due to run out shortly).

I assume you don't use the AVG-Anti-Spyware resident shield as well or are you currently using it until it runs out and will then go to TeaTimer and just have it as a scanner?

I have recently been freaked out by the sheer volume of false positives many of these generally excellent programs have been giving me. For instance both CounterSpy and Spyware Doctor have been keeping me on my toes recently checking whether their results are false or not, they seem to be but it's stressful and then on the other hand they also detect many real nasties(not much with me anymore because I don't have them like I used to). One program however I will never use again is PestPatrol, it seems to usually detect more false positives than the real malware!:eek:

DonkeyStyle \o/

Other -/> none / don't use active scanning of any kind.

Tar.Aldarion

I did that and got over 100, 000 infected files.

I use AVG.

DonkeyStyle \o/

<<shrugg>> Any time I run these things they never find anything... except for adaware which spares me the horror of those system-cripping tracking cookies (oh noes!)
I still scan the odd time with AVG, but resident scanning seems a bit OTT.

tbh I haven't had malware or anything since I last used IE6.

ActorSeeksJob

I use SpywareGuard, and its by far the best real-time protection imo

Black Swan

Can't answer your poll, cause I use more than one of those mentioned. I use a compatible bundle of anti-malware/spyware/adware programmes (Recommended by PCWorld, as no one programme will catch them all). VISTA comes with an active Defender and my AV programme has one built in too. I also use blockers and others that require a scan command (passive).

LilKitty

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

Can't answer your poll, cause I use more than one of those mentioned. I use a compatible bundle of anti-malware/spyware/adware programmes (Recommended by PCWorld, as no one programme will catch them all). VISTA comes with an active Defender and my AV programme has one built in too. I also use blockers and others that require a scan command (passive).

I'm only talking about a classic Anti-Spyware program that is used for active monitoring by the user(so the passive scanners or ones that have both abilities but you only use for that purpose, blockers, etc. don't count in this poll).

LilKitty

ActorSeeksJob wrote:

I use SpywareGuard, and its by far the best real-time protection imo

It only blocks certain things, as far as overall malware protection goes it's very limited. Anyway I don't include something that in the poll because I'm talking about the classic types. It's more of a active blocker.

LilKitty

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

<<shrugg>> Any time I run these things they never find anything... except for adaware which spares me the horror of those system-cripping tracking cookies (oh noes!)
I still scan the odd time with AVG, but resident scanning seems a bit OTT.

tbh I haven't had malware or anything since I last used IE6.

The question is do you use a hardware Firewall and do you use the net for only certain things?

aidan_walsh

ActorSeeksJob wrote:

I use SpywareGuard, and its by far the best real-time protection imo

I decided to take a look at that, and unless I got something different by the same name the definitions haven't been updated since 2004?

r3nu4l

I use SpyBot S&D (with tea-timer) and Adaware from that list.

I use a ton of other stuff including rootkit revealer and Hijack this.

ActorSeeksJob

it only blocks certain things, as far as overall malware protection goes it's very limited

As far as I know it blocks a hell of a lot of spyware/malware/trojans, and isn't limited at all.

I decided to take a look at that, and unless I got something different by the same name the definitions haven't been updated since 2004?

I had heard of this concern before, but the reason for less frequent updates with SpywareGuard is that it doesn't need to update as frequently. Much of its detection abilities are heuristics in nature. They work for many of the newer versions of spyware installers even without adding "signatures" for them. An update is made when there are new items coming out that are not detected that way.

I've been using SpywareGuard and SpywareBlaster for quite a while and I get absolutely no spyware or tracking cookies. They get two thumbs up off me and most other people from PC Security websites are of the same opinion.

LilKitty

ActorSeeksJob wrote:

As far as I know it blocks a hell of a lot of spyware/malware/trojans, and isn't limited at all.

At the risk of irritating you I'll proceed with this anyway.
First of all having used this admitting fine product myself for quite some time it has on very few occasions stop me from getting malware on my computer. The main function I find useful is when it alerts me to BHO changes and such. SpywareBlaster on the other hand seems to be a much more useful product but it still mostly deals with restricting access to sites and cookies. I also use this program and that one gets updates usually at least monthly. In my experience and having tried a plethora of products using only SpywareGuard and SpywareBlaster won't give you enough protection against malware unless you are a very careful internet user and let's face it even the more informed of us don't always do that.

However I highly recommend using both these products but in conjunction with a classic Anti-Spyware product rather than by themselves.

LilKitty

r3nu4l wrote:

I use SpyBot S&D (with tea-timer) and Adaware from that list.

I use a ton of other stuff including rootkit revealer and Hijack this.

You remind me of myself, I can actually interpret HijackThis logs but that's another story. The problem I find with using too many products is the false positive factor. You'll get some programs that'll display these and other programs wont pick them up(because they're false positives after all) but if you're like me you still get freaked out and worried about the possibility of it being legit. So I'm planning to scale down the amount of scanners I use for the purposes of my sanity!:D

ActorSeeksJob

You didn't irritate me @ all LilKitty, everybody is entitled to their opinion, I'm not an expert on the program so there's a chance you know something about it that I don't and vice versa.

SpywareGuard and SpywareBlaster won't give you enough protection against malware unless you are a very careful internet user

Well just from my own personal experience, those two programs have given me more than enough protection. I haven't had any spyware/malware infections in a long time due to these two programs. And i'm not particularly careful when surfing the net. Of course I have AVG anti-spyware also, but it never finds anything, and being good with HijackThis lets me analyse my pc quite quickly for malware.

What I always recommend to people if they want to keep their pc safe from malware is :

SpywareGuard, SpywareBlaster, AVG anti-spyware, no other anti-spyware programs. Once you have these programs you will get practically no spyware.

LilKitty

ActorSeeksJob wrote:

You didn't irritate me @ all LilKitty, everybody is entitled to their opinion, I'm not an expert on the program so there's a chance you know something about it that I don't and vice versa.



Well just from my own personal experience, those two programs have given me more than enough protection. I haven't had any spyware/malware infections in a long time due to these two programs. And i'm not particularly careful when surfing the net. Of course I have AVG anti-spyware also, but it never finds anything, and being good with HijackThis lets me analyse my pc quite quickly for malware.

What I always recommend to people if they want to keep their pc safe from malware is :

SpywareGuard, SpywareBlaster, AVG anti-spyware, no other anti-spyware programs. Once you have these programs you will get practically no spyware.

If you're going to recommend they only use AVG Anti-Spyware you might also want to throw in a completely free alternative like Spybot Search & Destroy since after the trial period for AVG is over it no longer offers resident shield protection. AVG-Anti-Spyware is a good program but their are better, SpySweeper is the cream of the crop but it costs money too. I think though its best that people have at least 2 of these scanner programs just in case one doesn't pick up something the other does. You'd be surprised how even really good ones will miss something sometimes that another one will detect. 2 is enough though, I'm not even going to tell you how many I have on my computer but then I'm a security nut, just too paranoid about malware is all!:eek:

I'll admit I'm no expert but I have some training under my belt(nothing in writing but that and experience, usually through my own painful experiences) and I like to keep on top of the security scene but then you sound like you know a thing or two yourself.:)

ActorSeeksJob

Yes I know a little bit about PC Security

Your views on PC Security/programs are where I used to be a few years ago, no offense meant with this. I used to have like 3/4 spyware programs on my pc, and thought Webroot SpySweeper was amazing. The simple fact for me is that only AVG anti-spyware is needed for a scanner, and SpywareGuard is probably the best real-time protection out there.

Webroot Spysweeper isn't as good as you think. It's a resource hog, not free, scans take for ever, and pretty sure it doesn't fix serious malware issues like AVG does. AVG does the same exact jobs, better and for no cost.

if you're going to recommend they only use AVG Anti-Spyware you might also want to throw in a completely free alternative like Spybot Search & Destroy

I fix a lot of PC's online for numerous sites, I recommend AVG as a scanner program not for it's real time protection. SpywareGuard I recommend for real-time protection. I do also recommend Spybot and Ad-Aware as alternative scanner programs so it doesn't look like im promoting AVG since I also recommend their anti-virus product.

Two anti-spyware programs is an ok idea, personally I find one is enough if your using AVG. But if i was to use Spybot, then i'd also use Ad-Aware since both these programs arent as strong as AVG.

It's just from personal experience that i've come to these conclusions. Malware infections like Smitfraud wont get fixed by Spybot and Ad-Aware. AVG on the other hand will remove all traces of it. There's a lot of infections like that which wont get fixed by majority of anti-spyware programs.

Just my 2 cents I'd love to know what security programs you use for your PC Kitty.

LilKitty

Are you telling me you volunteer at those security sites? Like interpreting HijackThis logs and stuff like that?

BTW, Smitfraud really does need some special attention that even AVG-Anti-Spyware can't give but I'm not going to mention programs in case someone decides to try it and screw up their PC!

ActorSeeksJob

Yes I interpret HijackThis logs and fix pc security problems for a few sites. Can often see me around here fixing pc problems.

AVG anti-spyware DOES actually fix Smitfraud
Have used it many times when i've been too lazy to use SmitfraudFix. Hence why it has a place in my heart, removes so many tough infections that no other programs can remove.

Blowfish

I use a hardware firewall, do most of my browsing in Linux and on the rare occasions i'm browsing in windows I have Zonealarm pro (yes I know it gives lots of false positives, but I know what i'm doing and can spot them straight away) plus a healthy dose of common sense.

I still haven't gotten any malware yet.

LilKitty

Blowfish wrote:

I use a hardware firewall, do most of my browsing in Linux and on the rare occasions i'm browsing in windows I have Zonealarm pro (yes I know it gives lots of false positives, but I know what i'm doing and can spot them straight away) plus a healthy dose of common sense.

I still haven't gotten any malware yet.

Well using Linux most of the time and having a hardware firewall I'm not at all surprised you haven't gotten any malware but I'd be very interested to know if there is any known malware that exists that specifically targets Linux, even just a proof of concept type. I've tried looking but have found none thus far.
I've used Linux before and no offense I don't want to go there again, unless it's a Live CD and I do like some of those!:D
It's just not everyones cup of tea, being an avid gamer it's not really a suitable OS for me anyway. But that Penguin is certainly a more attractive logo than Windows!:)

Sum1

I use AVG Anti-Spyware.

Black Swan

LilKitty wrote:

I'm only talking about a classic Anti-Spyware program that is used for active monitoring by the user(so the passive scanners or ones that have both abilities but you only use for that purpose, blockers, etc. don't count in this poll).

Three on your poll. Trend Micro, Spybot S&D with teatimer, and Windows Defender are all active (and compatible with each other and VISTA).

ethernet

On a related note, is Spybot Search and Destroy by an Irish guy? IIRC, in the donation page, the address at the end of the screen is Wicklow.

ActorSeeksJob

yeah i remember seeing that before, strange indeed. I think he's german but has his business in Ireland. Don't know for sure though.

Black Swan

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

Three on your poll. Trend Micro, Spybot S&D with teatimer, and Windows Defender are all active (and compatible with each other and VISTA).

Recently dumped Trend Micro with all it's troublesome and useless popup warnings, which, when turned off, defeated it's purpose. Adopted Kaspersky Internet Security version 6.0 that has several proactive anti-malware/spyware/adware functions.

LilKitty

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

Recently dumped Trend Micro with all it's troublesome and useless popup warnings, which, when turned off, defeated it's purpose. Adopted Kaspersky Internet Security version 6.0 that has several proactive anti-malware/spyware/adware functions.

I do go in for Security Packages. I feel that a specialized program does generally does its job better than a component of a larger program and you generally don't have all the resource bloat.

Black Swan

LilKitty wrote:

I do go in for Security Packages. I feel that a specialized program does generally does its job better than a component of a larger program and you generally don't have all the resource bloat.

I've got 2 gigs memory, two dual core chips, and 667 FSB on my rig and don't know that Kaspersky is running in the background. Experience no slowdown at all, or any delays in loading programmes.

LilKitty

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

I've got 2 gigs memory, two dual core chips, and 667 FSB on my rig and don't know that Kaspersky is running in the background. Experience no slowdown at all, or any delays in loading programmes.

Well of course you wouldn't with a computer like yours but not all of us have such powerful computers.

The resource hogging aspect of programs is going to be mainly an issue for people with older computers or ones with less RAM, for something like you I wouldn't be concerned about that issue in general.

Black Swan

Yes, that's probably the case. Since coming overseas, I've realised that you can get a lot more capacity for less money in the USA.

My biggest prob was not Kaspersky, but rather running Vista Ultimate for the first time. It's the king of resource hogs and ran much slower than XP-2 with less memory. They've got to be joking when they say you can minimally run Vista with 512 memory! Vista's now running faster, but only after I made several fine tuning adjustments.

LilKitty

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

My biggest prob was not Kaspersky, but rather running Vista Ultimate for the first time. It's the king of resource hogs and ran much slower than XP-2 with less memory. They've got to be joking when they say you can minimally run Vista with 512 memory! Vista's now running faster, but only after I made several fine tuning adjustments.

Now that is a joke! Running Vista with anything less than 1G of RAM is madness:eek: and even then you'd really want a bit more. It's the most bloated version of Windows I've ever seen and much of that probably has to do with it's sleek new interface and all the bells and whistles Microsoft is so found of. Even if I had as much RAM as you and as good a graphics card I'd still stick with XP for a while yet. I prefer to wait until such an OS has been out for a few years and matured a bit.

Black Swan

I was an early adopter, and am suffering through the bugs and patches. Thought about holding off as you are doing, but my last rig got a zero day worm that took it down, and looked like major surgery was required. Also found a deal over here on a new rig that was hard to resist.

Word is that MS is already planning on a major revision to Vista with Vista-Figi, just like XP-2 was for XP, followed by a completely new (so they claim) OS called Vienna. Whatever timeline they proclaim will more than likely be delayed, so we are looking probably 2-4 years into the future.

LilKitty

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

I was an early adopter, and am suffering through the bugs and patches. Thought about holding off as you are doing, but my last rig got a zero day worm that took it down, and looked like major surgery was required. Also found a deal over here on a new rig that was hard to resist.

Word is that MS is already planning on a major revision to Vista with Vista-Figi, just like XP-2 was for XP, followed by a completely new (so they claim) OS called Vienna. Whatever timeline they proclaim will more than likely be delayed, so we are looking probably 2-4 years into the future.

Well let me tell you if I was a man I'd be wanting cosmetic surgery on well you know. I only have 250mb RAM and a crappy video card of 120bm RAM and to top it off I'm drunk. So am I only one who is a fan of Jim Beam? Seriously, as drunk as I am I can tell you be prepared to wait for at least a year for any major update to Vista. Long at Xp's history for example.

Blowfish

LilKitty wrote:

Well let me tell you if I was a man I'd be wanting cosmetic surgery on well you know. I only have 250mb RAM and a crappy video card of 120bm RAM and to top it off I'm drunk. So am I only one who is a fan of Jim Beam? Seriously, as drunk as I am I can tell you be prepared to wait for at least a year for any major update to Vista. Long at Xp's history for example.

Quoted, so you can't go and edit it in the morning

Black Swan

LilKitty wrote:

and to top it off I'm drunk. So am I only one who is a fan of Jim Beam? Seriously, as drunk as I am I can tell you be prepared to wait for at least a year for any major update to Vista. Long at Xp's history for example.

Cheers to ye! Don't do the hard stuff too often, but when I do, I like Bushmills straight from a shooter. Understand your reluctance to be an early adopter. A lot of my apps that worked with XP-2 don't work with Vista.

_CreeD_

I don't run any active scanners, beyond AVG's email scanner and the IPS functions of Comodo Firewall. I have AVG AV, Ewido, Spybot that are run about once a week. Prevention and Vigilance works better than any active scanner imho. I run Firefox with NoScript behind a PIX 501 firewall with Comodo set to application monitoring and IPS only. Have never had any issues.

LilKitty

_CreeD_ wrote:

I don't run any active scanners, beyond AVG's email scanner and the IPS functions of Comodo Firewall. I have AVG AV, Ewido, Spybot that are run about once a week. Prevention and Vigilance works better than any active scanner imho. I run Firefox with NoScript behind a PIX 501 firewall with Comodo set to application monitoring and IPS only. Have never had any issues.

Well you seem to have some pretty good protection from what you've said. Yes being careful on the net is better than just relying on security software or hardware but it's also better to have both.

Capt'n Midnight

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

They've got to be joking when they say you can minimally run Vista with 512 memory!

What to do you expect them to say, once you have bought a new PC or upgraded your old one they probably reckon you can go out and buy more RAM.

These are the same guys who for windows 95 gave a minimum spec of 386 with 4MB ram.

Capt'n Midnight

Should really be a multiple choice poll

Spybot Search & Destroy(TeaTimer)
Windows Defender - more for registry / startup protection

On the basis prevention is better than cure - FireFox with NoScript, AdBlock plus , Redirect Remover and other extensions > Opera > IE7

LilKitty

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Should really be a multiple choice poll

Spybot Search & Destroy(TeaTimer)
Windows Defender - more for registry / startup protection

It shouldn't be in my opinion because running any of the programs on the poll at startup because this can very likely lead to conflicts and if you're running both these programs at startup well then you're actually undermining your computer's security.

Black Swan

LilKitty wrote:

It shouldn't be in my opinion because running any of the programs on the poll at startup because this can very likely lead to conflicts and if you're running both these programs at startup well then you're actually undermining your computer's security.

Some programmes seem to be capatible, while others conflict? PC World, Wired, and Maximum PC have recommended that more than one spyware/adware/malware programme was needed (but not multiple AVs!), because no one programme catches them all. Some of these programmes are active, while others passive. The question is... can you have more than one active programme at startup? For example, Spybot S&D and Defender?

Like Capt'n Midnight, I've been running mutliple active programmes at startup for quite some time. Admittedly, I had to sort through those that were compatible against those not, but now have a bundle that seems to work.

LilKitty

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

Some programmes seem to be capatible, while others conflict? PC World, Wired, and Maximum PC have recommended that more than one spyware/adware/malware programme was needed (but not multiple AVs!), because no one programme catches them all. Some of these programmes are active, while others passive. The question is... can you have more than one active programme at startup? For example, Spybot S&D and Defender?

Like Capt'n Midnight, I've been running mutliple active programmes at startup for quite some time. Admittedly, I had to sort through those that were compatible against those not, but now have a bundle that seems to work.

Ok I think you missed my point. I was talking about the programs in the poll and when a person is running more than one with a resident shield. It is a great idea to have at least 2 of these programs but not both with resident shields enabled. From what you said you were using earlier that doesn't count towards what I was saying because they weren't even on the list and they are a slightly different type of active protection. Look for example running Teatimer and Windows Defender at startup together is not a good idea.

ActorSeeksJob

yeah running something like windows defender/teatimer/spywareguard at startup will lead to conflicts, the same way running two firewalls will. new beta version of spybot out btw

LilKitty

ActorSeeksJob wrote:

yeah running something like windows defender/teatimer/spywareguard at startup will lead to conflicts, the same way running two firewalls will. new beta version of spybot out btw

Running SpywareGuard with any of the programs in the poll is ok because of how it works, the same goes for SpywareBlaster.