Spybot Immunize feature

I know that spybot isn't the best on-demand scanner these days, but I wonder if its immunize feature is still useful or not. How do you think?

 

Previous thread on immunizations.

I dont think immunizations are worth it unless *maybe* you exclusively use IE.

 

I would say that immunization these days are 10-20% effective.

I say this for a few reasons:
1) IE6 SP2 and IE7 come with the default setting to alert on all activex installs. they make it very tough for automatic activex driveby installs which plagued IE5, IE6 and IE6 SP1.
2) Most of the items in ANY program's immunization list of activex killbits are probably dead and useless. You will never encounter those activex items anymore so its not worthwhile having them. Having them is not harmful, but because numbers matter they are there and are not effective.
3) SpyBot immunize, like SpywareBlaster, adds countless domains to the IE blocklist, preventing the ability to visit those sites. This is a great addition, indeed, except many of the sites on those list don't even exist anymore. Again, since numbers matter, no one is going to remove those sites . Blocking dead sites certainly isnt effective...


This isnt to be a knock against immunization. I prefer to see that people are taking an active interest in bolstering their security. But I dont like when people think they are getting end-all protection from malware with immunization. Immunization is a nice addition but it is nowhere near as effective as real-time antispyware protection, HIPS, real-time antivirus protection, etc.

 

That is what a Hosts file does. Spybot/SpywareBlaster doesn't prevent you visiting the site, it just ensures the site is in the Restricted zone which greatly reduces what it can do.

As an IE user I very rarely found myself at such a site, thus limiting protection value. So long as you are able to do it, it is much better to restrict what all sites can do, rather than relying on lists of bad sites.

I have to confess I have given up using Spybot and SB these days.

 

Thanks for the input. I decided to give up spybot as expected. On a side note, spybot leave 39xxx entries inside ie7... which I don't think my finger tough enough to remove it manually...

 

I had similar results. Trialed the most-recent Spybot, found it worthless, uninstalled and ran RegSeeker to find and delete a load of crap left in my registry by the Spybot uninstaller - in addition to cleaning up the mods done to IE7.