Ad-aware Standard Edition

Hi John,

o.k. apologies accepted and NO hard feelings!

 

It is clear I should have directed my remarks at Nicolas. Thank you Marianna for accepting my apology.

Pieter, I don't think there's any question that SK was directing the post at me. I believe he was responding to my post. But, that's neither here nor there I suppose.

Nicholas, I never attacked AdAware as a product. Only Lavasoft for the way "Team Lavasoft" handled things for months and months. For you to come here on this forum and attack a product (Spybot S&D) that had to step in and do the job for AdAware users, and who users turned to in droves after your abandonment is simply incredible. Complete with Lavasoft made screenshots! And you wonder why I have a problem with the tactics of your company? You wonder why it is discredited in the eyes of many?

By the way, fellow members of Wilders, that attitude from Nicholas? Who really is "Team Lavasoft" ---- that's exactly the attitude I was referring to in my post. He couldn't have proved my points any better. Why are they that way? WHY can they not just admit that they screwed up (badly) and move on from there? Instead, Nicholas is actually still trying to defend Lavasoft's actions - and blasting a competing product who SAVED MANY during the disappearance of AdAware. It shows their fears of users sticking with Patrick Kolla's product, Spybot S&D (of which there will be many).

Those of us who "contribute little" - as SK said in his post - and have harshly criticized Lavasoft's practices include Mike at Spyware Info (who has tirelessly poured himself into the spyware and privacy issues with so much else on his plate):
http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/newsletter/archives/december-2002/12252002.php

And, Fred Langa with The Langa List:
http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-01-13.htm#3

I am not alone. It is a deeply held position felt by many and with all sincerity for the well-being of the end-user in security matters.

For those who disagree, I have no problem with that - at all. I live privacy issues day in and day out in my job, so I take it personally. All of you have every right to your opinion and I respect that. Only SK, who made the comment about the criticism coming from "those who contribute the least" immediately after my post, do I have a little problem with.

So, that's where I stand and I would appreciate it if people could try and understand my position from where I come from with my chosen field of work. I deserved the rebuke for addressing Marianna, but I honestly felt Marianna was with Lavasoft. I DO feel bad about that.

All The Best.

John
Luv2BSecure

 

Hi Luv2BSecure,

I for one understand your position : what's the use to try and discredit a concurrent product which does fine its job throwing with screenshots from the beta as far as I can see ?
Nobody says AA is a bad product, but the politic of the team during the "gap" was at least strange and there is no mystery that Lavasoft 5.83 could cause great disfonctionnements when trying to delete some new or modified malwares with its out of date ref file.

I do think AA6 is already a very good product and will be an excellent product shortly.

Just a little fact as Nicolas spoke about SBSD :
sig in SBSD about 5000 / AA6 4000
Patrick does NEVER critisize, at least publically another product but rather try and work with other developpers : see the link to SpywareBlaster in the GUI : that's a fair attitude

I cannot understand why having the same goal, protect users' privacy one spends time an energy to discredit other products....

Seems becoming a new way of live for AV/AT/Security products young developers nowaday

Long live and success to AA and SPSD.

Cheers,

 

since april '02 i've been unable to use adaware, (blue screen) and i am scared to try the new one. spybot s&d makes the same type error.. spywareguard and spywareblaster do not. regedit does not. proxo does not. Guess which ones i think are worth having? as for the headbanging between Spybot S&D and AAW, tempest inna teaspoon. If i have to recommend ONE of em, its gonna be the nicer folks, (kudos for efficient(?) programming, but social skills count HEAPS with me).. and again, guess who I think is the nicer? 39$ for a proggie? that cleans up messes that are 99% preventable with freeware? puhLEEZE. thats a gf2 graphics card, or a router on the daily special someplace, something with a warranty, engineering specs, ratings, and that WORKS! ya'll can do flamethrowers at twenty paces if ya wanna. ima use prevention and regedit and dont think ill be sorry.

 

These statements in no way reflect the opinion of spywareinfoforum.com........ Wait a minute.. yes they do

Hello again Nicolas.

Good to see you in public again, although I bet Coldmoon is muttering under his breath about it.

Version 6 may or may not put AAW back at the top of the anti-adware/anti-spyware totem pole in terms of performance. Scot Finnie seems to like it anyway: http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/39.htm#review1
I'll look at it and the plus version and see what they can do.

I don't particularly care which product does the best job. If AAW does a good job, I'll list it again on my site. It will never again be my top pick however. You abandoned all development for your 5.83 users for 4 months, so what's to stop you from doing it again when it's time to develop AAW 7?

You can't just drop updates for a security product. Whether it's free like AAW, or commercial like Aluria, you have to keep it up-to-date for your users. At the very least, you could have examined the new commonname LSP hijack and updated for that if nothing else. Every other developer I deal with updated within a week to deal with it because the old removal routine causes damage.

Despite all the criticism coming from me, I'm not just another Lavasoft basher. I was part of the team once and I regret that I had to leave. I just couldn't deal with Ann's antics at the boards anymore and that insane feud with Mike K.

I'm not loyal to any particular product. My only concern is for the people trying to get rid of spyware. When you wouldn't update for that commonname problem, I felt I had no choice but to speak out about it as loudly as I could.

I'm glad to see so many updates for the new version so soon. I'm a little disappointed that many of them are bug fixes. Perhaps you should rethink your view of public beta testing. That would avoid these problems.

Good luck with Lavasoft. I hope AAW can become what it once was.

Say hello to Melanie for me and tell her I hope she's doing ok.

Mike H

 

Hello,

Well i'm an AA+ user since version 5.6 and have always like it. But after going so long with no update I move to Spybot. I have the new version of AA+ and will keep it as a secondary to Spybot. Had NOD32 gone without updates that long while working on v2 I would have also changed AV's the same goes for TDS the last time I checked ( today ) they are still updating. That Lavasoft needed to upgrade there product was no reason to totally abandon the people using it. I also remember that AA went without updates when they upgraded to version 5.83. I hope that Lavasoft will make the right choices in the future. There are too many Lop.com's out there to be fighting with each other.

Loki

P.S. I had planned to have a friend use AA but instead went with Spybot due to the support that she could get. Support is the number one thing in any good product.

 

The product was great. The support of the product was terrible. The product now is probably great. Hope the support will improve. I admit that I never purchased the program, but couldn't believe what happened to all of those users that had.

bob

 

I'm afraid to purchase AA6. But AA6 free is a good back up for Spybot S&D.

 

If the future is anything like the past, I am sure A.A. and L.S. will be right there leading the way, Nicolas. All I can say with regard to the overall situation is this: I'm reminded of an old Irish saying: "Even god doesn't please everyone". I suppose there are always going to be ingrates and rabblerousers; it's inevitable. But what pleases me most is to see A.A. up and running strong again. All the best, Nicolas!

Sincerely,

sk

 

SK,

Do we live on the same planet?

They shouldn't have ever been GONE to welcome them back!

Quoting Fred Langa tonight in one of the most widely respected technology newsletters:

"I'll take a look at the new version of Ad-Aware, but I don't plan to rely on it any time soon. LavaSoft left their customers exposed to malware for some 5 months before the new version came out--- an eternity when it comes to online security threats. There are plenty of other excellent anti-spyware tools out there, free and paid ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-01-13.htm#3 ), that offer regular, frequent updates, and that have avoided the site outages and download problems that plagued Ad-Aware even when it was being updated regularly."

"I'll stick with those other tools for now. An out-of-date security tool is almost as bad as no tool. Even if the new version is perfect (and it cannot be--- no software ever is), it'll be a while before Ad-Aware regains my trust."

- Fred Langa....The Langa List....February 5th, 2004

John
Luv2BSecure

 

It seems there is a case of mistaken identity. I am not Mike/Mikey/MIke K. Other than linking to posts by him, I am not related to him in any other way.

What prompted me to post is that I was able to create a false positive in AA6 by simply making a new folder and naming it "gator" and AA6 identified it as spyware. I found this amazing since it is such a simple error. Maybe it's not as big of a deal as I think it is, but it isn't a lone example of problems for AA. After updates to fix updates for AA 5.8x last year, followed by no suppoert for 4 months, I expected better results. If this fake gator folder was an isolated example, then it would not be the issue it is.

If Lavasoft wants people such as myself to pay for their products, then people need to trust Lavasoft. I lost that trust last year from the actions and lack of action by Lavasoft. There never was any significant action by Lavasoft to allay the fears of it's users that they were being abandoned. Only the promise of AA 6 sometime in the future. They never maintained an ongoing dialog with their users to "touch base". They also got the impression of being distant because many questions about what was happening were never answered. Overall, it was starting to look like they were going to be another one of the dotcoms that simply disappeared.

Now, AA6 is out, and it is not the great leap forward that was promised. Expectations were raised very high because of the 4 months of no support, because of the answer: AA6 will be out. Yes it is out, but I see nothing that tells me the problems are over, that it will be like it used to be when it was the premier software for adware/spyware removal. What I need is consistant positive behavior by Lavasoft over many months, if not years, to get that trust back.

My challenged to Lavasoft: Gain my trust back.

 

Hi:

I was the first to post here after getting the email re downloading the new AdAware6.0+ version and I raved over it's fast scanning, liked the GUI, etc. etc.

This in no way altered the fact that Lavasoft abandoned its customers, particularly the ones who actually paid good money [as i did] for the product only to be left without updates.

Now, I am about to throw the cat amongst the pigeons and ask what gives with the following scenario with AdAware6.0+

I have been scanning with AdAware since installing and it's been finding spyware [tracking... errrr... mining data.... cookies ~ engage, quicksrv, doubleclick, etc.] and I have been faithfully "removing" them [but leaving them in the back-up section] thinking all's well.

However, this is the worrying part, they are NOT being DELETED from my TIF's at ALL

I had an occasion to look in the Temporary Internet Folders yesterday only to see these cookies still living there. I rescanned, thinking they must ave come back from surfing in the meantime but could not figure that out as had only been to this forum.

It found the files, I deleted them again, [still leaving them in the back-up]. Once again I looked back in the folders, still there.

I rescanned again, it found ZERO files this time, looked in folders again and they were still there.

So I opened up Internet Sweeper, looked under the "Cookies Found On Your System" and saw the ones that were supposed to have been deleted [apart from the ones I wanted kept].

I did a "Sweep", said it deleted XXXX files, then open up Windows Explorer again and looked in Temp Internet Folders. ALL cookies [except the ones I wanted] were deleted.

The only thing I can surmise is that I had Internet Sweeper installed prior and somehow it's "claimed" rights over the cookies. Is this possible?

Any thoughts?

Cheers, a mystified TAS

 

There are no cookies in the TIF folder. Those are internal pointers in the cache which point the browser at the cookies in the cookies folder. The start menu shortcut that launches Adaware is not the actual adaware program, it only points to it. Remove adaware and the pointer/shortcut does nothing. The same goes for those pointers in the TIF.

 

Hi MIke:

Thanks for the reply. I am now even more confused, lol

Yes, I know the cookies are in the Cookies folder , just that they also appear to be in TIF's. I did not realise they were "shortcuts".

In the TIF's the cookies are listed not as shortcuts, they are just there and both folders contain the same thing, size, name, etc.

No mention of "shortcut" at all. I presumed they were there as part of the TIF files.

The other thing is then, if that's the case, how come AdAware does not remove those as well, surely they were recognised as such. I mean Internet Sweeper deleted them no probs at all from BOTH folders.

No big deal then, if that's the case, just wondering now why, but as long as the main one is deleted then no probs.

Cheers Mike, TAS.

 

Hey guys, just for the record, I haven't been here in this thread before. I haven't even been on this board in a month or so. Haven't been avoiding you guys, just been busy. Wouldn't be here now if Nick hadn't PMed me this morning. I think it is funny that Urizen thinks every time someone complains about something that it must be me. I'm kinda flattered. Just FYI, the only place I need to hide my ID is at LS where it is true that I can not openly post with my own identity. Anyone want to know why? Anyway, thx for the laugh. BTW Since 'Nick' reged to our board as well as here, I'm fairly sure that Paul could verify this. Besides, when I talk bad about LS, I always mention my questions that have yet to be answered. http://www.net-integration.net/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?s=3e41c1871314ffff;act=ST;f=34;t=1005 Urizen, care to comment? Also, just for the record, whenever discussing AA vs SSD, I always recommend using both since AA has finally been fixed so that it doesn't cripple sys anymore. Example; http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,5850780~root=security,1~mode=flat Later folks.

 

If you clean the index.dat files (TIF and Cookie folders) with a program such as MRU-Blaster, these shortcuts that point to removed cookie files should disappear.

Best regards,

-Javacool

 

thanks javacool, forgot about MRU with the cookies and tif's now, just ran it.

And Mike is right re shortcuts. I manually deleted one from the TIF's and it immediatley disappeared, did not ask "permission" yes/no, it just went, then I went to the Cookies folder itself and tried one there, and it asked me if I wanted to delete it or not as usually it does when deleting.

You learn something new everyday

 

Hi,

I have been reading this thread with interest as I used to use Ad-Aware a while ago (back when I assumed that installing the program protected me forever). I never knew that spyware evolved so quickly so I happily used the product assuming I was protected. On joining Wilders I found out to my dismay that Ad-Aware wasn't worth much as it hadn't been supported properly in quite a while and so I downloaded Spybot S&D (which is free and is updated regulary).

All I have to say is that I have little trust in a company that takes money and then leaves its product with only skeleton support if that.

All I can say I will vote with my mouse and people who feel desserted should do the same, the more forgiving give it a go, the screenies certainly look nice.

I'll climb down from my soapbox now.

I have said it before and I will say it again, the value of this forum for technical issue is fantastic, rarely do you find such a collection of knowledge under one URL ..... Good Work!!!!

Wink

 

Hmm

Looks like some big egos were hurt.

Am I right to say that many of the "big names" here are bashing , sorry critising adaware 6, on principle (because of "abandonment" issues) rather than any technical weaknesses?

Thanks

 

Basher

The key word you used was PRINCIPLE, which the Lavasoft Team seems sorely lacking.
Technical weaknesses...would you consider screwing up a person's computer...which is what the previous version of adaware could do...a technical weakness ?