Spysweeper or Spyware Doctor

You're welcome cmwilson.

 

I changed from Spy Sweeper to Spyware Doctor.

Guess i'm a black sheep too

 

Glad to see you made the switch. I'm sure you'll be happy with it.

EDIT: Smokey can I ask what factors were involved in you making the switch? This might help other users that are having trouble deciding between the two.

Thanks,

Chris

 

I downloaded and tested spyware doctor product and found it's 'infiltrations' fake and not based on real infections.

On first scan it found 313 'infections' which turned out to be IE temp pages cache. I deleted the IE cache with a free cleaner and Spyware Doctor then only detected 17 'infections'.

I then downloaded Ad Aware Personal and did a scan and found that the others were harmless MRU traces in registry, deleted them with Ad aware, ran another Spyware Doctor Scan and I was clean.

The troubling thing is that the 'hype' said that my 'infections' were 'CWS Trojans which is a lot of bull. This is nothing but fraud and scare tactics taking advantage of the gullible.

There is a massive difference bewtween having a malicious CWS program installed and the IE temporary cache and Spyware Doctor labelled almost 300 temporary IE cache pages as 'CWS Trojans'. So much bulldust I have never seen in my life.

Dave

 

I have other (positive) experiences

Such a negative behaviour didn't happened on my machines.

Is a heavy statement.
PC Tools can sue your for that.

Is your personal opinion.

 

Smokey,

I only told the truth.

I downloaded Spyware Doctor only over an hour ago and did the scan only half an hour ago and it labelled 313 IE temp cache pages as CWS Trojan. I deleted my cache and only got 17 infections on the next scan. Then I used Ad Aware and it reported around 20 MRU traces in registry which it said could be ignored. Spyware Doctor said they were backdoor trojans. I deleted them with Ad Aware and then ran SWD and it found nothing.

There was no REAL spyware on my PC and I knew it but these guys have got to sell their product so they have to make people believe they are infected.

I only posted the facts of what happened. I don't care who thinks I'm a liar and who thinks I'm not. I'm not here to lie and deceive. I stated the facts and if people are not open minded enough to trust each other then they will never learn from each others genuine experiences.

I am only saying that ALL my 'infections' were false positives all 330 of them, but hyped up in language by Spyware Doctor to make me alarmed. I don't give a damn if you believe me or not. I told you the facts about what happened to me only a half hour ago. Spyware Doctor in my opinion is generating false positives deliberately to win customers. It's a pity that a company has to stoop so low to get money. 330 false positives is no small number. If they were real infections I wouldn't be online posting to you!!

Cheers

Dave

 

So 17 MRU traces detected by SD but 20 detected by Ad Aware? So if these are not spy/adware then why does Ad Aware even list them giving you the option to ignore? If you are saying that the 17 found by SD were 'fake' then that means based on the logic you have shown that Ad Aware actually had 3 more 'fake' detections than SD. Also in case you were unaware SD does have an ignore option also.

The other temp files that you deleted how were you sure they were not real threats?

Thanks,

Chris

 

Hi Chris,

Ad Aware alert said that the MRU instances were negligable and did not pose a real risk. Not really malware in the true sense of the word as far as Ad Aware was concerned.

The point I was trying to make was that SD was over exaggerating the seriousness of the threats when really they weren't. I feel that SD was trying to enhance the users perception of the threats being serious while they were not. I'm not saying SD is not a good program but that the 330 'infections' it reported, 313 it labelled CWS trojans which were nothing but IE cached pages is over the top. It was very strange. Spy Sweeper as well as Windows Defender and Giant AS never ever detected & labelled stacks of IE temp files as CWS trojans. A newbie who wouldn't know the difference would think SD caught 330 infiltrations and bought the product when all that needed to be done was to clean out the cache with a free internet cleaner. I'm quite disappointed at this find. It's a hell of a lot of false positives for a trial version. I wonder why?

Cheers

Dave

 

Those many false positives was exactly my reason to dump Spyware Doctor.
Even after I tried it a second time, I still got FP's.

I don't think it's to scare people, but they need to address these FP's ASAP.
It's been a year or so since I first tried and while it wasn't listed as a rogue, it
produced numerous FP's at that time, which freaked me out since I didn't know.

I'm not saying the product is bad, but more work must be done before
adding signatures to avoid those FP's. We wouldn't want another PP.

While Spy Sweeper produced some FP's, I never had that many, so I'll stick with Spy Sweeper.

To each his own to use whatever you like.

 

I was all ready to buy it today and had a discount coupon but decided to test it and I'm glad I did. There's no need for the entire IE cache to be listed as infected. No other anti-spyware program I've come across has done that and I've tested a lot of them just recently. Most of them are great but SD was overkill. The FP's were generated with the trial version and I am suspicious about that as 330 is definitely not normal. A few I can accept but that many to me indicates it's by design and not an error.

If I had 313 CWS trojans on my PC I'm sure NOD 32 would have detected something wrong. Very strange indeed.

Cheers

Dave

 

This may be true but Ad Aware did detect them correct? The main difference is that it told you they were negligable and SD did not. I agree it would be nice if SD did say something to that effect as well. But what I was trying to get across is that both programs did detect the MRU entries so its hard to say they were false or 'fake' detections.

Not sure if you meant you checked the same files with all the programs you listed or not. It's kinda funny when we see a real virus on Jotti's detected by say 1 or 2 programs before any of the others we say how good it is. But in this case you say because you have never seen the other programs detect that many it must be false positives. Trust me I'm not saying they weren't false positives but I just think you should have sent at least a couple of the files into PCTools to see what they had to say. That way there would be pretty concrete proof they were false positives or not.

I totally agree false positives with SD or any other AS/AA/AV/AT.. should be at a minimum.

Well said

EDIT: forgot to say thanks and name

Thanks,

Chris

 

For the convenience i quote here a reply about the subject in another thread, by Randy Bell, i'm thinking word after word exact the same:

"As for Spyware Doctor, it gets very high ratings at CNET and elsewhere. Its detection rate is comparable to the former GIANT A.S on which MSAS is based. So I would have toi say Spyware Doctor is a first-rate A.S. scanner. Now, as with all scanners {AV, AT, AS} -- you have to show some intelligence in interpreting the results and you have to customize the scanner to meet your needs. If Spyware Doctor flags something you want to keep {something you deem not be too risky}, then just put that in the Ignore List. The same would apply, if we were talking about MSAS {GIANT} or Spy Sweeper or any of the other scanners: Use intelligence to interpret the results, and customize the scanner to fit your needs."

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=708223#post708223

The post is one year old, but his remarks are still valid.

 

Chris,

You're right about the MRU's, only the warning status was different. It's a pity I didn't report the other ones because I knew what they were straight away. I empty my IE temp files very often so it was just a session where I hadn't emptied the cache yet.

Dave

 

Hi,

Personnally, I would recommend Spysweeper over the latest version of Spyware doctor...

The reasons for wich I wouldn't recommend the latest version (3.5) of spyware doctor are the following :

1) This version seems to lock your drive wich made unusable some microsoft service/component like CHKDSK and others. I also suspect this version to give problem with other softwares... On that particular problem, their technicien have told me that they know the problem and working on it (that's already a few months)....

2) Since recently (the last few weeks) the F/P are back in force and for one, I have right now at least 15 infections found (Backdoor.sdbot.ADS) on my clean system. The funny thing with that one is the fact that this is a recurring one (related with SVKP registry items)... Generally PCtools always take a few months to solved that F/P in particular wich is very frequent with SD. You can see that Backdoor.sdbot.ADS was a problem almost 6 month ago : https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=105444&highlight=spyware doctor (and I had to jump trough a lot of hoop to get it resolved back then) and since a few weeks that false positive is back and a few other...

3) Since a few of their latests version, I simply can't make a complete scan because of the Hosts files scanner. That little rascal take a few hours to go through my host files (less than 9000 entries) and that if it doesn't loop indefinetly....

4) Their technical support is pathetic... Trying to report F/p is really a pain in the a** and they generally always answer you to uninstall and reinstall the program to solve the problems (and that whatever the problem is)!!!!!

So, if you have to choose between Spysweeper or Spyware doctor, for the moment, I will strongly recommend Spysweeper and that, until Spyware doctor solved their numerous problems and get their act straight...

Best regards,
Atomas31

 

No prob. Well maybe next release you can give it ago again. You know how it is with security type companies. Always improving for the most part. Thanks for the discussion though. Hopefully we'll have another one soon enough maybe about something else even

This is very unfortunate situation that I was unaware of. I hope they will resolve it soon.

Hopefully you have sent them the FP's to help them resolve it quickly.

I assume they are aware of the situation?

This seems to be the word on the street. I haven't really seen that side because I rarely have to contact them with support issues and have had only 2 FP's I think in almost 2 years.

Thanks for the input and as always good hearing from you!

Thanks,

Chris

 

Salut Chris12923,

Well, I don't know if PCtools engineer are aware of every thing I report here but one think is sure is that they should be... Otherwise, I am not the one who is gonna communicate with them since I dislike very much their technical support and there stupid answers... It is always a nightmare to have to deal with there technical support (at least from my experience).

Just in case, you should also stay away from there latest release of Registry Mechanic since that one screw my system and the system of a few people (for exemple : it is deleting system32 files) and they didn't seem to resolved the situation in term of the files to deleted that detect RM (I report that situation a few month)...

Best regards,
Atomas31