"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