Suggestion for autoupdate feature

ONe of my coworkers used my computer while I was away and when I got back I found that a search-bar has been installed. I don't use IE for anything bu Windows Update, so I don't have many spyware problems, but since my coworker so kindly infected my computer, I was forced to go out and download a few spyware-removal programs. I had trouble downloading some as the sites seemed to be down, and once I found working download links and got the various programs installed, the autoupdate feature on ALL of the programs didn't work. This seemed fishy since jsut about any other site worked fine, so I opened up my hosts file and found THIS...

I would suggest having the program do a check of the hosts file before attempting to check for updates. This would eliminate this little 'trick' these spyware a--holes use to keep their viruses on people's PC's.