Anti spy software

smeggle

Came across a new anti spy tool last night. ?It's a pay for option but free for 30days to try.

It also incorparates 'CWSHREDDER' which was specially designed to remove coolwebsearch and it's many variants from your machine if infected.

Was reasonably impressed with it as it has quite a few good tools and also caught 5 things running on my system that spybot/ad-aware missed.

might consider purchasing after further testing. CWSHREDDER though is a must for anyone. coolwebsearch is a particular nasty piece of work and very difficult to remove from a system once infected.

only other anti spy software I'd recommend is spybot or ad-aware. ms anti spy is still only just out of beta (Might even still be a beta issue) and a ssuch can't be trusted really. Other types I wouldn't really bother with a smost are worse than the spyware they are supposed to remove.

link

_Turismo4

Nice but you’ll have to buy it in 30 days time, that's the only down side to that I hate.

R0ot

I work part-time as a computer tech, and ive seen this spyware program before, it is a pretty good program but not essential, as for MS spyware i wouldn't touch it with a 60 foot poll.

daywalker

CWS Shredder was originally written by merijn

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/

there are other tools on his website, like hijackthis which is great for finding out what parts of windows spyware may have infected, shows processes and startup, etc

you can download CWS Shredder as a freeware part on its own from that site,

http://www.intermute.com/spysubtract/cwshredder_download.html

Hagar

So you are either in the US or OZ/NZ or your'e on your own?

That said I'm going to give the US version a go.

smeggle

daywalker wrote:

CWS Shredder was originally written by merijn

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/

there are other tools on his website, like hijackthis which is great for finding out what parts of windows spyware may have infected, shows processes and startup, etc

you can download CWS Shredder as a freeware part on its own from that site,

http://www.intermute.com/spysubtract/cwshredder_download.html

yeah hijack this is a very good program. I considered posting it but it is not to a program really for the ordinary end user. If people do use it I'd suggest they scan/generate a log (HJT will do this for you) and post it to a tech support forum that has people who know the program well. I know a guy over at winamp who is really good with this stuff.

Don't just go clicking anything and fixing as it can seriously mess things up if you don't know what your doing with it. That said it is a very good program to see just what is plugged into I.E. and can help an engineer track browser hijacks and other nasties very quickly.

Thanks for the link to the stand alone version of cwshredder - wondered where that was..

The only downside I can see as well is the 30day trial and then purchase. Bit of a shame that as it seems to be doing admirably well. Wonder if they'll choose to issue a light version for free and a pro version. Be nice if they did and give them a better client base IMO.

Nice powerful little prog all the same. I'm checking there 'Venus Fly Trap' out at the moment. It's supposed to 'Catch' the spyware as it comes in and thereby prevent infection. Been visiting a couple of known places I use for testing and upto now seems to be doing it's job. I'll run it for the full 30days and see how it performs.

Also just tried out 'Avast AV' on another machine I left connected without protection for a couple of days. (On purpose obviously). Caught 1 trojan that AVG missed which kinda surprised me as it wasn't a new one. (Sent them a report on that). Simple and easy to use interface and settings for the end user, another reason I like AVG so much. Bit big and hogs resources a little but overall quite impressed with it.

ebooborg

what wrong with ms antispyware? at least give ms credit for trying

smeggle

ebooborg wrote:

what wrong with ms antispyware? at least give ms credit for trying

I do and fair play to them for trying. I used it for a couple of days on one of my test machines and it went nuts. Totally de-stabalised the system. This was the initial beta release. It will probably get sorted but it hasn't been around long enough yet or tested enough in the wild to be able to be considered fully trustworthy.

While other industry standard ones such as spybot, Ad-Aware have been around for 3-4 years now and have a proven track record. The one I found the night before last I would probably class in the same as ms antispy due to that same reason though it has faired much better than the ms issue overall upto now.

I'm not going to say that ms won't eventually put out a good sound product but it does need a lot longer than 6-7 months to be considered fully trustworthy. Same with any new product such as this.

daywalker

A good anti-spyware program that i use is spywareblaster

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com

it basically stops spyware getting in to your pc, its updated every 2-3 weeks and it supports both IE and firefox, its also free

i found it very good and for what it doesnt stop ive also got spybot and adaware.

Vyse

The Winfixer popup is doing my bloody head in. I never use to get pop ups but now all of a sudden it's starting. Will this do the job for me?

smeggle

Vyse wrote:

The Winfixer popup is doing my bloody head in. I never use to get pop ups but now all of a sudden it's starting. Will this do the job for me?

Ad-Aware should sort that out for you. I'll find the links for hijack this - actually you can get it at www.lurkhere.com Very good tech forum I visit from time to time. (click the link in the top left 'Nice Files'). They also have a couple of programs om there like bugfix and start up list.

Post a log from hjt before you remove anything but what is most obviously allowed. (Allowed stuff you add to the ignore list). Anything else you fix but make sure first. (It makes back ups anyway). Hijack this is a nice little prog to see just what is actually running in I.E. as a plug-in or BHO (Browser Helper Object). Some you can trust others not.
Like I say generate a log first and post it as an attachment on any thing your not sure about removing. Most of the allowable stuff is kinda obvious anyway.