Webroot Spy Sweeper

Hi Everyone ...

I may or may not renew my subscription to Spy Sweeper this year because I keep hearing that CounterSpy and other programs are great. After hearing the audio clip below:

http://www.webroot.com/mp3/030806CompOutlook-Spysweeper.mp3

I feel that Spy Sweeper is truly the best solution out there for the average home user who does average Internet surfing.

I'd appreciate it if anyone can let me know their views on Spy Sweeper and if they too think its the best or if there is a better solution, please let me know

Thanks so much,

Gracie

 

Gracie,

In objective assessments (well, ok, mass media evaluations) SpySweeper always seems to do quite well. CounterSpy is a fine offering as well. The AS market is very similar to any of the other signature based products - the top tier products are constantly jockeying for top dog status. At any point in time one or the other of these offerings could land in the top slot, but the performance differences between them are generally minor.

Unless you have a clear reason to switch, if your planning on having an AS application and the one you have is working well, I'd stick with it.

Blue

 

SpySweeper did a pretty good job for me until the day I installed F-Secure AVCS. The two products conflicted with one another, so I ditched SpySweeper.

I now use ewido, which co-exists just fine with FSAVCS and I think it does a better job than SpySweeper (though there's no way for me to really be sure of that).

You can read about it here... http://www.ewido.net/en/why/

and download a trial here... http://www.ewido.net/en/download/


Last but not least, ewido has a very good support forum right here on Wilders.

 

I think you pretty much already made up your mind Gracie.

I've also tried several in the past, whether that be CounterSpy (Giant), Spyware Doctor, Pest Patrol and some others I don't even remember the name.

For me the deciding factors were not to have to many false positives, good support and that it works well on my system.

In two years time that I've been using Spy Sweeper, I only had a minimum of false positives.
Can't say the same about CounterSpy, nor Spyware Doctor and certainly not Pest Patrol.

If I were you, I would stick with Spy Sweeper because it really is a very good anti-spyware. Of course if you want to trial some of the others, be sure that they run well on your system, don't slow you too much down and above all do a good job protecting you.

 

I`d stick with Spy Sweeper gracie, for the same reasons Blue gave.

 

Just wonder why not to use OA as antispyware and HIPs, 2 in 1?

 

If you have a solution that works with no major deficiencies, why keep chasing after small to inconsequential incremental improvements?

I would agree that one should keep up on things, but the unending and frantic chase after the Grail of Perfect Security® really does become counterproductive after a while. Sticking with what works has its merits.

Blue

 

U are are perfectly right but it doesn,t harm to discuss all the options, especialy at Wilders as there are people here who like to discuss. Otherwise people go with an AV+ windows firewall.

 

Of course it doesn't, and sometimes we also find minor deficiencies, that we've become accustomed to, are not present in competing products. Discussion is always welcome. In this case, if I were broaching the topic that you were, I might have started the same way, but augmented the initial question with a the background prespective comparing relative strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches in front of us. Naturally, that does require a fairly detailed working knowledge of the feature sets and approaches used by both applications.

Blue

 

Hello all , I appreciate all the feedback you gave. It helps a lot and I will stay with Spy Sweeper

Thanks again,

Gracie

 

I think you're making a wise decision. I've tried all the major AS programs and decided on SS as well.

 

Hi Ailric , well thanks! I've had it for over a year now and I've never run into a false positive... just a great product I think.

 

Another vote for Spysweeper here. Counterspy used to be my big favorite but the newest build was such a hog on resources and they were flooded with complaints. Spysweeper just keeps ticking along...

 

I have and use Spy Sweeper too and like it except that I do not run it automatically. After running manually though, it loads into memory until shut down.

Counterspy looks a lot like the Microsoft Defender program which is free for now. I heard somewhere that Microsoft bought their program from them. I use it too and leave it running all the time.

Also, I use Spy Bot (freeware) and it is great too.

You can have several and I have noticed that each one seems to find something that the others missed (maybe).

 

My actual AS scanners are Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D , ZeroSpyware and SUPERAntiSpyware.
They don't find anything dangerous, except one false positive yesterday.
Ad-Aware detects usually MRU's and tracking cookies. Spybot S&D congrats me all the time.
I couldn't afford CounterSpy and SpySweeper, but I ran the trial versions for awhile.
I guess, I'm a sissy surfer and using Firefox + Adblock + NoScript + SiteAdvisor is probably the main reason, why I don't get any spyware.

 

I run SpySweeper but I keep CounterSpy as on demand.
I also just found out for Verizon DSLw/MSN customers that they have added SpySweeper as part of their "security".
I'm trying to find out if this program is free to all of their customers or is this a trial/buy situation.
SS expires for me in December and if I don't have to buy it again by going through MSN I wont, but if I do no big deal, I'll just pay the cheaper price.

 

since i get it free with msn now, it tried spysweeper for a few days, but got rid of it and went back to windows defender. my system seemed slower when spysweeper was installed, and i didn't like how it always displayed the results.....windows defender just runs in the background and does it's thing and dosnt display the results of you scheduled scans.

 

I have MSN too.
This might sound crazy but is there a difference between the free SpySweeper being offered through MSN and the one you buy directly from Web Root?
I'm asking because for one, through MSN its free and SpySweeper has never been free unless you're using it as a trial only.
Also Im wondering if anything has changed between the MSN version and Web Root version.

 

U sre right but infact I did not want to make it a comparison thread for OS and SS. Moreover I have used only trial versions of both so it might not be possible for me to compare both of them in detail.
BTW, I totally agree that if you find something suitable and it is serving for your security purpose well, stick to it unless you just are just fond of experimenting.
Thanks.

 

It was originally Giant AS bought by MS. Then it was launched as Counterspy. So CS and MSAS have same engine( don,t know about Windows Defender). CS used to get updates from MS and sunbelt both acc to agreement as I read( MSAS used to get updates only from MS!). But now I don,t know the latest.

 

Erm, not quite (unless I'm misreading). GIANT AntiSpyware was the original program, and they leased the program and updates out to Sunbelt Software, who rebranded it and released it as CounterSpy. Then Microsoft bought out GIANT, inheriting the partnership with Sunbelt until it expires in July 2007. This means that Sunbelt will continue to receive signatures produced by Microsoft for their product until July 2007, Sunbelt also adds their own signatures created by their own team and does quality assurance on the signatures from both sources, although Sunbelt and Microsoft are now making very different programs (but probably with the same engine).

As for the original question, my vote also goes to SpySweeper and I second Blue Zannetti's remarks. SS and CS are generally the top two, so if you're going to choose one it would probably be more about the UI and features. Signature database aside, I tend to like SS a lot better because it uses less resources and find it easier to deal with. SS can also scan for rootkits and keyloggers using similar techniques, and have found that function to work pretty well.

Regarding the MSN version: I have MSN as well (although not Verizon) and I was skeptical at first, figuring it was cut down or tied to the MSN browser (which I won't use), but I just installed it and it appears to be the full version but with "for MSN" ammended to the name "SpySweeper" throughout the program. Good deal! The only catch is that you have to install it through the MSN browser, but once that's done you don't have to use it again.

 

MSN gets SS licenses for their customers and offers it for free. the only difference is the version (iirc the MSN version is older) and teh MSN version uses the MSN logo.

 

Thanks WSFuser

 

Nope Actually it's the full current version, they just added "for MSN" to the SpySweeper logo.

 

Thanks for updating, Notok.