Anybody used Aranea Spywizard?

[Untouchable J]

Aranea Spywizard (http://www.freeimagebrowser.com/visualizer/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=27&t=217)

Sounds like a backup for Spybot...Have anybody tried or currently using this program? If so please voice your opinions.

Thanks

[Untouchable J]

Anybody?????

[Tassie_Devils]

Hi Untouchable...

OK I was the guinea pig and tried it...

Now one thing before trying to do a scan....

MAKE SURE YOU GO TO PREFERENCES TAB and UNcheck "Automatically Recover my Internet Settings" if you have a home page set to anything other than Google or MSN Search default.. It WILL try to change...

SpywareGuard alerted and I had a devil of a job restoring OLD value until I realised that Aranea is STILL RUNNING even upon closing [had to quit from SysTray].

So I restarted it, UNchecked that, rescanned and no alert.

Then I saw the Home page line in there... so put in the Home page URL, REchecked the "Automatically Recover my Internet Settings" but it STILL TRIED TO CHANGE.

So by all means use that, just you have to realise that if using SpywareGuard, you will have to quit Aranea FIRST before trying to restore OLD VALUE. ;)

Yes.. IT IS FAST as the blurb states, but what it is depending on is it scans the Registry for known files and that's all.... no folders, etc. etc. like AdAware/Spybot. Still, it's a damn good backup. [From what I have seen so far].

Apart from my initial heart attack with home page change, I found it easy.

I installed, then immediately checked for updates [had to allow via Firewall of course] and it had 1452Kb to download.

I scanned, it was bloody fast, less than 1 second [see para above].

OPINION: At first glance, seems to do as advertised, but of course, I had a clean system, so certainly could not vouch for infections like CWS, etc. Still it's another reference point of checking. ;)

I will post some screenies for you.

First Preferences:

TAS

[Tassie_Devils]

Scan window once done..

NOTE the Coolwebsearch Reg item... I am just unsure how it would handle a true infection...

TAS

[Tassie_Devils]

Scan report

TAS

[Tassie_Devils]

Update.. this was after I had already done an update, hence the "no new updates available"

TAS

ok.. up to you guys to try... ;D ;D ;D

As for me, well, I DEFINITELY will keep it. Just because of it's Registry Scanning Speed... sooo fast.

[Notok]

I have a friend that is constantly infected, I'm using the cattle prod now to get him to use it and give feedback ( :D ) I'll let you know.

[Notok]

Hmm.. seems to think that the Mozilla uninstaller is a backdoor trojan. I double checked it w/ NOD32, TDS-3, and Kapersky's online scanner, and it came out clean, I think I'll try to submit it to the program's author.

[Tassie_Devils]

notok....

I run Firefox and no alerts here...

Now, since I last posted I hve played around a bit more and have had a couple of little hiccups with it...

First: No matter if I uncheck "Minimise to Systray" or not, it does and it will not close unless I right click and quit.

Second: I open Quarantined [just to have a look even though i know nothing is in there] and it opens fine, but when I click on the X to close the quanantine window, I get the System Error SOUND [no message] and the whole program closes.

Third: Update window, it opens, but once again get a System Error Sound [no alert] and it will check/update fine, but the program itself closes in the background.

Still, I paid nothing for it, so will ;D and bear it.

TAS

[Azn_Tweaker]

Untouchable J, No Ad-Aware?

[Notok]

tassie: That's really weird, it's behaving perfectly for me.. it didn't change the directory to 'read-only' on you or anything, did it? (I've had that happen before)

The quarantine window is just an explorer window for me, it seems strange that it would affect the program.

[Nick]

Eric Howes was not impressed with this product.


-{ Quote: "Still worse, the scan log reported: "Regsitry scan: Entries successfully deleted" -- though the display listed no Registry entries as removed, just the one file. Were Registry entries deleted? If so, which ones? How would I recover those entries?" }-


More here: http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?p=19555#19555


.

[Notok]

What he's mainly reffering to is the issue with the mozilla uninstaller that I ran into. I asked about it in their forum, and they said it was added because there's a trojan that specifically targets the mozilla/netscape uninstaller. That's great (I guess), but I think there's going to be a lot of miffed mozilla/netscape users in the near future if they can't get the program to distinguish between an infected file and a clean one, or find another way of detecting the infection.

As Eric Howes states, though, the fact that there's no user control over the scanning and removal opens the door wide for potential damage. I think it will be a matter of how responsive the developer is to these concerns. If he addresses them (before it becomes a problem) it would probably be worth keeping around, if not I'll ditch it and never look back.

Tassie Devils: It's doing the thing to me now, too, where it keeps setting itself to sit in the tray and autoscan when I try to close it. I guess it's not THAT big of a deal, but it is a nuisance.

[Blackspear]

-{ Quote: "...I run Firefox..." }-

Hey there Tas, what version of Firefox are you running?

I'm having trouble running it with this site (Wilders), see the following:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=41946

Cheers ;D

[Tassie_Devils]

Hi Blackspear..

I am running the latest 0.92 and no problems *now*... however, I had a similar one to you... although not exactly the same....

I lost my ability to run in 'auto tags' in replying [ie: click on a smilie and nothing happens, also when I went to apply the bold/url link tags, or quotes, *nothing* at all happened]

Soooooooo... I uninstalled FF via Add/Remove [I left the folders in the Application Data, reinstalled it and it kept my profiles, extensions, themes, and it cured the problem....

Try uninstall/reinstall.



OK... to the above posts regarding the removal of anything bad found, Yes, I had concerns [could not post them earlier, been away] if it found anything, as I could not find out if you could get them back or not.

I personally would like to "see" for myself, what it found first before I decided to delete anything...

So in that light I shall reserve my decision again, and be careful.

Thanks to the links re Eric Howes site.

TAS

[Blackspear]

Thanks Tas, I'll try that.

Cheers ;D

[Untouchable J]

Sorry everybody I forgot I had started this thread ;D

Thanks for your opinions about this program. I havent used it yet and from reading the threads I will continue to not "give it a whirl". The main reason for me not using this program is:

-{ Quote: "though, the fact that there's no user control over the scanning and removal opens the door wide for potential damage." }-

I'm not an computer expert but still have learned alot about computer security. I still would want complete control in what items are removed/quarantined.

I currently am using Ad-Aware & Spybot for my main spy/adware security but have been searching the web for a good "backup". What are some recommendations for an nice"backup" Anti-spyware program?

Thanks

-J

[TimeKeeper]

Here's a few good free anti-spyware/malware programs that may help.

1. WinPatrol http://www.winpatrol.com

2. A Squared http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free

3. X-Cleaner http://www.xblock.com/download-freeware.shtml

Hth :)

[Tassie_Devils]

LOL Untouchable, and I had forgotten I had replies in this thread.

Anyway, an update. Just approximately 15 mins ago prior to this post and even reading this thread, I decided to uninstall it. I did not want to have to worry about doing a scan and deleting stuff without any input from me.

I played with it over the past few days, making sure I had a registry backup, and even though I think the potential is great for it, it really does need refinement for the User to participate more in the program's actions.

I will keep an eye on it and see where it leads, but for me at the moment I am not totally comfortable with it despite my earlier postings. Although I did give some warning/concerns then. ;)

Sooo, it's now goneeeeeeee.....

TAS ;D

[angeldust]

Just to let you all know that the developer now has its own forum for discussion/help, etc. ( http://www.freeimagebrowser.com/forum/ ) and is now at v1.0.8.1 loged on Aug.18.04 @ http://2haveit.com/listdetail.php?id=20644
It appears that they are looking into improving this software as in the thread about this product they supposedly fixed a reported bug within an hour. I don't know if they have addressed the issues brought up here and also those over at Spyware Warrior or not as it is getting late & I'm too tired to check the whole forum right now, sorry.

[Tassie_Devils]

Hi angeldust,

Thanks for the info on its latest development mate. ;)

In due time, I shall recheck. As I stated earlier, to me, it looked like it had potential, but I do need the ability for it just to scan first, and let me decide if it needs 'fixing'.

Thanks again. :)

Cheers, TAS