A question about SUPERAntispyware

I'm currently using the 30 day trial of SUPERAntispyware and I've also recently installed Scotty WinPatrol and I've noticed something interesting. On the "Cookies" tab of my Scotty WinPatrol under the Cookies Filters section, Scotty is suppose to remove cookies that contain certain text portions in their title that are listed in it's Cookies Filters section. Some of the text portions for cookies that are listed are:

atwola
burstnet
burstbecon
revsci
tacoda
yieldmanger

however, often times after running a SUPERAntispyware scan, cookies that have these text portions in their titles, still show up from the scan. What gives?

 

That Scotty is crap?

 

The cookies may also be part of other user's profiles and Scotty may only be scanning/enumerating the current user profile. SUPERAntiSpyware scans all profiles. Do you have more than one user profile on your system?

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

 

How often do you have Scotty set to patrol the Cookie folder?

If WinPatrol is only removing cookies every 5 or 10 minutes you could easily be picking things up in the meantime, then scans will find them.

 

Also, from the WinPatrol help file:

"Cookie Folder
Scotty the Watch Dog may not know where to look for your browser's cookies. In some cases, third party applications may change the default folder where cookies are stored by your web browser. Also, you may have more than one type of Mozilla based browser installed, each with its own cookie folder. To change the cookie folder that Scotty actually monitors and cleans, click on the yellow cookie folder icon below the filter list and select a new cookie folder."

 

That's a much more likely explanation.

From what I've heard of SAS's scanning times, Scotty would have plenty of opportunity to remove cookies, mate with the dog next door and raise a litter of puppies, before SAS had finished its scan.

 

Don't know where you have got your information from but the scan times I get with SAS are perfectly acceptable (may not be up to those of SD4 or SS5 but then the software is not as invasive as either of those two) given that it is thorough.

 

I just completed a scan with SAS, and the time was 22 min and 34 sec. While that is longer than some, Spyware Doctor took 16 minutes when I had it, it is about the same as Counterspy, which tok 24 min, 37 sec.

I do not consider the time for SAS excessive, but not all will agree.

Best,
Jerry

 

Yeah, i agree. 22 minutes is nothing really. It's just that some people want to press scan and it instantly says 'Finished in 0.0000001 seconds, scanned 1 gazillion files, 2 gazillion processes and 4 Trillion registry entries'. I really do give up on some people!

muf

 

Good point, scanning faster, does not mean better. If someone think, that SAS scans too long, then he should try free MWAV, its scan takes ages (houres), but it finds almost everything.

 

Nope. Just one.

 

How often? Well, under the "Cookies" tab, it says:

"Scotty the Windows Watch Dog automatically will remove cookies that contain certain text portions in their title,"

therefore, I always thought that Scotty's cookie removal was in real time.

 

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what that is saying or how it applies to what I was asking about. Also, I don't use the Mozilla browser, I use IE. If you could elaborate a little bit more, I would appreciate it.

 

I'm not currently running WP, so I cannot check, but it used to be that Scotty would patrol his checkpoints at predefined intervals (which you could adjust). If I remember correctly he was only patrolling the Cookie folder by default every few minutes.

He automatically removed cookies as soon as he found them, but he only found them when he went looking.

I'm afraid I have no idea what the situation is on the latest WP, but judging from this:-

http://www.winpatrol.com/cookies.html

you need to click the 'Monitor' button in the Cookie tab to adjust patrol times. If you set it to '0' Scotty won't patrol at all - perhaps that is your problem?

 

The plus version has realtime monitoring but even that does not include the cookies folder.You can set it to scan every minute if you wish though.
. A possibility regarding your problem may be that SAS also scans the cookies in IEs locked index.dat files?.Even if winpatrol deleted your windows cookies ,there would still be a copy of them in the index.dat files.Maybe SAS detects those.Nick would have to elaborate whether thats the case though.
ellison

 

Thanks for the info, Topper. I just clicked on the 'Monitor' button to see what the patrol time was, and it was already set at '9' minutes(apparently, the default setting).

 

That's an interesting thought. I *have* noticed that sometimes Ad-Aware will detect cookies that have already been scanned and deleted(or quarantined) by other anti-spyware programs that I have used.

 

It means that Scotty will patrol and clean the cookie folder that is specified under the cookie filter list, and that you may change the monitored folder by clicking the yellow folder icon then navigating to and selecting a new folder to monitor. Since you use IE the cookie folder would typically be something like C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\Cookies\

As others have already pointed out, cookies may also sometimes be stored in other locations as well, and if so, Scotty then won't be able to sniff them out and eat them.