Giant Antispyware

Hi what duz anyone think of this i installed it today? can it run ok with pc cilian 2004 its found 400 reg thingo's god ?

 

Be careful what you delete with this one - it finds a lot but has numerous FPs!

 

i took it off? if it has false positives? plus it ripped out my spyblaster? ekkkkkk and shortcut menue

 

Hi Maddawgz
I have giant and like it very well,runs well with all my progs.
Rita

 

The differences in experience are puzzling. My experience over the past several weeks has been similar to Ritaann's. I have had GIANT running for a few weeks with no problems at all. It has detected a few minor problems and there have been no false positives or any other problems obviously related to its use.

I am using it on WinXP Home with Sp2 and all the updates. In addition I have PG 3.0, Kav 5.0.2, and BO Clean running on a pretty standard Dell box with 1024 Mb memory and 1.6 GHz Pent4.

Bdiamond

 

i installed it today and my CPU went up to 100. do you run it with real time protection along with tea-timer anyone? i think tea-timer for me conflicts with almost everything.

 

Running Giant here for a week and I haven't had any problems.
I don't run tea-timer.

 

I was running the Giant trial along with Tea Timer w/o any problems. I also run Pest Patrol's memcheck & cookie patrol, WinPatrol, SpywareBlaster, NAV, SSM, and a few other program with no problems whatsoever.

 

ok perhaps i fiddled with the advanced tools ekkkkkkk !! Duz this replaced spyware gaurd though?... or they different? how often is Giant updated signatures?

 

Giant AntiSpyware just damaged my system!

If found 6792 traces in friend PC and than we wanted to remove them but after reboot PC wont start, it just show desktop but no taskbar and no icons. Same in SAFE MODE!

Probably it deleted some Win2000 file.

Dont know what to say , at first it surprised me how many parasites it found and than it damaged his system after cleaning was done!

 

I am trialling Giant ATM and one of the things I like to do is to compare what the resident bits are doing ie. CPU and memory.
After 11 hours here is a Task Manager screenshot - Note although the two giant services use more RAM SpySweeper uses about 5 times as much CPU time.
Both were left installed when I installed the Latest ProcessGuard private beta today and both picked up the registry changes before the first reboot.
It is early days yet but Giant appears to be a good product

 

I've seen threads elsewhere that give Giant a mixed reception. Some people rave about it, based on it's impressive test results, whilst others are less certain, due to its apparent propensity for FPs.

It would be useful (to myself and, I'm sure, others) if you could kindly pass on your impressions of Giant after you have completed your trial.

 

Will do TopperID, So far I have had three updates and run three scans with no FPs so far, time will tell

Pilli

 

I'll jump on here as i also would like to know
What i do know is that Pilli will keep us posted

BTW.............It seems the updates are slowing down..................i look at others for example and wonder e.g. Kav......lots of updates but, for me i am not comfortable with it.

 

Actually, FP's with GiantAS aren't that frequent ... althought, if the scanner is set to "Deep Scan the files" ... the chances of FPs increase, as is true in most scanners, AV, AT & AS ... as it's now kind of using Hueristics, where matching parts of files, strings etc. are reported/detected ... and you've got to investigate from there.

At any rate, I really like GiantAS ... (a good show, seeing as it's still new and improving) ... It's also was the top rate AS (I believe) in Eric Howes tests. The report is available here --> http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-test-guide.htm

dog -

 

Hi RainWalker here is my fifth day summary

I have been testing AdAware pro, SpySweeper (both licensed) & the Giant 15 day trial version.

I have one possible false positive from spysweeper on a cookie that are used on the DCS site. Neither AdAware or Giant see this cookie as spyware though the cookie does hold my login details I believe.

All three scans took about the same amount of time, both AdAware and Giant scanned around 160,000 objects (files, reg settings cookies etc.) Whereas SpySweeper only scanned about 75,00 objects though adjusting the settings to create a flat playing field for all three is problematic
Giant on a full in depth scan saw more, about 8000 objects, than AdAware doing it's full in depth scan. AA appeared to do much better on the registry scan 9000+ for Giant and 17,000 for AA, though it is hard to determine exactly how these various scans count "objects"

Overall and based on Eric Howe's tests I believe I will be getting a license for Giant in 10 days time as I like it's ease of configuration better than either SS or AA and, of course, detection capabilities according to the EH tests
All three pick up the same registry changes. OK you need AdAware's AdWatch running which is only in the paid for versions.

They are all very good as far as I can tell but if I was trying to select from all three having no license for any then I would go for Giant at the moment due to it's proven large definition base. I would also get AdAware free as a double check. In additiond I also use SpyWareBlaster and SpyWareGuard.

Giant has updated every day since installing and I have had only one update for both AdAware & SpySweeper

I have not experienced the False Positives that other have but I believe that these were based on earlier less precise definition sets.

Still some days to go but so far Giant has the edge on the other two.

Pilli

 

GIANT is the best Antispyware I've ever worked with, period!
False positives? I've never had any. I would like to know what people consider false positives? A program like Flashget? I'm sorry, but that one does have spyware in it. Not as harmful, but still. What else do you expect Giant to do? To say "Oh well, it's spyware, but not so sharmful so I don't mention it?".
Of course, there might always be FPs, but I've read on other boards that the company behind the product is very supporting and will remove false postives as soon as possible. This product even found a keylogger (verified with 1 other program) that not even KAV 5.x with latest updates was able to find.

Unstable? Not all all! Causing problem? None, serious none and I have it on XP SP2 running in realtime 24/7.
<snip> It so easy to say that Giant is to blame when it's Giant that crashes. If that were the case then we can start blaming all our applications instead of windows ok? LOL

GIANT is a serious company (if you know them a bit better), with a serious program, period. It finds lots of spyware, it cleans it without a problem, is very informative, up-to-date and has some great extra tools. It also doesn't use so much processor time like SpySweeper. Memory use is a tad high, but hey, you can't have it all.

For those who wrote that it screwed up their system after a clean; READ! The program can either ignore, quarantine or delete. If you plan to delete everything blindfolded, I'm sorry, but then don't come here whining, neither when you already had a system that was already screwed up in the first place.

Edit: I snipped out a line that was considered product bashing, which is against Wilders TOS. If you wish to discuss problems with a specific software or product, then please post in the appropriate forum in a non-bashing fashion. puff-m-d

 

Haven't tried Giant here - mainly because (on most of the forums I read):

(a) results from Giant haven't exposed anything more perhaps a single cookie that other programs like SBS&D and AA failed to flag (for whatever reason).

(b) the F/P issue

(c) Giant costs $30 - for one year's worth of updates.

<snip>

Pete

Edit: I had to remove portions of your post Pete after I removed the product bashing from the previous post and to ensure the topic did not stray off-topic... puff-m-d

 

you got spyblocker covering your $%* too I see. I think you are covered anyway Spy1.

inf.

 

Does anyone know whether it is safe to run Giant in your tray alongside both Tea Timer and SpywareGuard, without them tripping up over each other and perhaps corrupting your Registry in the process - particularly if you are running an additional registry monitor as well.

There is going to be a lot of duplication of function, but it is a question of what to leave off?

With regard to those Eric Howes tests, I think he was clear in pointing out that the tests in question were not designed to graduate the relative merits of the various AS progs, but were specifically aimed at some new and rather intractable threats - many of which Giant itself missed.

There is a difference between detecting a problem with a scan and being able to effectively delete/repair that threat. So I would be interested if anyone knows how Giant compares with the others in clean-up ability?

 

I run Giant along with Spywareguard with no problems. I don't use Tea Timer, however. I just installed Giant, and you are right there is some duplication of function, with other apps I am running, but no conflicts. A decision will have to be made eventually, by me ,what will stay and what can be turned off. (with no loss of security, of course )

 

Just to report back.

Having run Giant for the past 14 days I have now purchased it.
There have been updates every day bar one and I have had no FP's
I have consigned SpySweeper to my other secondary PC and now have Giant resident, AdAware Pro on demand + Javacools tools for spyware protection.
I have had absolutely no compatability problems running ProcessGuard V3050, KAV 5, TDS3, WormGuard 3 or any of my other resident programs.

I like Giant's configurability over both AdAware and SpySweeper
AdAware Pro does have a few more advanced features but these could be a little confusing for new users.

Cheers. Pilli

 

With the above endorsement it looks like it's time to take the plunge and give it a try!

Thanx for the report!

 

I bought a 2 years license because it's just that good. You have to remember that Anti-Virus software also has false positives sometimes and I did get a FP with Spy Sweeper as well as Giant but with Giant I reported it and in the next update it was gone.

There is a secure file shredder in the advanced tools and you have to know what you're doing otherwise you can wipe your entire hard drive.

This is an excellent product to compliment Process Guard because it protects certain checkpoints and does a very good job. For instance if a program tries to add something to your start up menu or another context in your right click menu you'll be notified - that's good protection. The default scanner is very fast and thorough too. Remember that no security product is perfect but Giant is getting much closer to what Anti-Spyware should be. The one thing I like is that it takes a kind of holistic approach like PG where it defends your pc on many fronts not just one so you've got excellent all round protection against spyware and with PG to protect it there's much less chance of being infected.

Refer to Pilli's and Wing's posts because they said everything else I was going to add.

Dave