Saturday, September 02, 2006

What is the best Free Anti Spyware?

The search for a do all, fix all, detect all Free Anti Spyware is analogous to searching for the Holy Grail. Recently, Grisoft purchased Ewido Networks, the purchase gives Grisoft a foothold into the Anti Spyware market. Although you can Ewido for free for 30 days. Is Ewido worth purchasing?

Are any of the Free Anti Spyware truely a notch above the competition?

I decided to conduct my own test. I installed Grisoft , LavaSoft , SuperAntiSpyware.com's and Safer Networking's . I installed all four of them. Ewido, Super Anti Spyware and Adaware SE did not require restarting the computer. SpyBot Search and Destroy did. In this first test, SpyBot Search and Destroy was not included in the test.

I loaded the updates for both Ewido, Super Anti Spyware, and Adaware. Then I conducted a scan of the system. Ewido detected 58 objects found, and 93 instances; the infected objects were tracking cookies. Super Anti spyware detected 193 threats detected, and the threats were from memory, file, and registry; they were tracking cookies as well. Adaware detected 87 critical objects, the critical objects were tracking cookies.

While scanning I noticed that both Ewido, and Super Anti Spyware had elapsed time, and Adaware did not. Ewido had a progress bar showing amounted completed. The rest did not.

I started the scan on , Super Anti Spyware, and Ewido at virtually the same time. Adaware completed its scan well before the the other two , and . The elapsed time on Ewido was approximately 1 hour 32 mins. The elapsed time on Super Anti Spyware was 1 hour 28 mins and 43 sec. Adaware did not display elapsed time.

After the scan, I did not select to fix the infected objects, critical objects, or threats. I ran the scan again this time with all four Anti Spyware programs.

In my next post I will report the results of the four programs Spybot Search and Destroy, Ewido, Super Anti Spyware, and Adaware.

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