Spybot S&D Past Its Prime?

[ted s.]

Technobarbarian wrote:
>
> With the current generation of spyware even the
> combination of Spybot and Ad-aware is very weak protection. I suspect
> that previous recommendations were based on the fact that it's free
> and better than nothing for those unwilling to pay for more advanced
> tools.
Neither Spybot nor the free Ad-Aware pretend to offer "protection" from
spyware, except for Spybot's immunize function. They merely try to clean up
after the fact.
Just what are these "more advanced tools" that you like?

[Technobarbarian]

"ted s." <teds@nowhere.invalid> wrote in message
news:426298ca$0$10814$2c56edd9@news.cablerocket.co m...
> Technobarbarian wrote:
>>
>> With the current generation of spyware even the
>> combination of Spybot and Ad-aware is very weak protection. I suspect
>> that previous recommendations were based on the fact that it's free
>> and better than nothing for those unwilling to pay for more advanced
>> tools.
> Neither Spybot nor the free Ad-Aware pretend to offer "protection" from
> spyware, except for Spybot's immunize function. They merely try to clean
> up after the fact.

You're mostly arguing semantics, but the paid versions of Ad-aware do
offer active protection.

> Just what are these "more advanced tools" that you like?

Right now the most effective tools that I'm using are: Webroot Spy
Sweeper, MS Antispyware, TDS-3, A-squared and Norton Anti-virus. A
difficult, but important area is rootkits. At present I'm using
Sysinternal's Rootkit Revealer and F-secure Blacklight. Your firewall is
important backup protection. I use Kerio, there are of course a number of
other reasonably effective programs available. For those who consider
Microsoft to be the evil empire there's another offshoot of Giant
Antispyware, Sunbelt Software's CounterSpy. I tried it and liked it, but it
messed up my MS Antispyware undate function so I removed it. Hopefully newer
versions will correct this problem. CWShredder is another essential tool.
This is, of course, not a definitive list, it's just, since you asked, what
I like and happen to be using at the moment. My level of paranoia is such
that I'm trying out new stuff and changing things around pretty regularly.

TB