eclectica
2004-01-15, 07:19
Spybot Search & Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/) is a free program that scans your computer for spying, spyware, adware, and some trojan programs. It has updates to the definitions, like an antivirus program does, that you can download. Currently there are 11,930 definitions it scans for when you run it.
The program is pretty simple to use. You have it scan your computer, and then select to fix everything. I was surprised to see how many incidents of spying it came up with. Some of them seemed like false alarms, because they were referring to security patches that I had already installed in Windows Update. Most of the spying incidents came from browsing the internet and getting cookies. My main computer which I browse the internet with had about 58 items to fix. My p2p computer in which I install many new programs that are unknown had about 22 incidents to fix. And a new laptop I got about two months ago had only 8 or so things to fix. I'll be curious to run the program from time to time to see what new items get added and fixed.
The program is pretty simple to use. You have it scan your computer, and then select to fix everything. I was surprised to see how many incidents of spying it came up with. Some of them seemed like false alarms, because they were referring to security patches that I had already installed in Windows Update. Most of the spying incidents came from browsing the internet and getting cookies. My main computer which I browse the internet with had about 58 items to fix. My p2p computer in which I install many new programs that are unknown had about 22 incidents to fix. And a new laptop I got about two months ago had only 8 or so things to fix. I'll be curious to run the program from time to time to see what new items get added and fixed.