Spyware Warrior

Whippet

This has been my spyware remover of choice since the days it was known as Ewido. Now I have received an email informing me that AVG Antispyware is to be discontinued as a stand alone product and will now form part of AVG 8.0 internet security.

I do not wish to change my current AV program Avast as I have been happy with this and the licence doesn't expire for another 10 months., and of course I cant run both. So I am left needing a good anti spyware/malware remover. I have tried adaware2008 and A2 Squared but both seem very slow in comparison. If anybody has one they would recommend I would be interested, especially if its free to use on a home based pc.

Gary R · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 3:31 pm Post subject:

Try Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

It's free, updates frequently, and has one of the better and quicker scanners.
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suzi · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 7:10 pm Post subject:

Moved to appropriate forum.
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wyrmrider · Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 8:00 pm Post subject:

Did you have any real time protection With EWIDO-AVG Anti-Malware?
agree with Gary however MBAM free has no real time protection either

If you are looking for free real time protection (depending on os)
Spybot t-timer works with all windows
Spyware doctor from googlepack- uncheck what you do not want
Microsoft windows defender (old Giant Anti spyware)
only run one of these along with your Avast- good choice-
and a good firewall

wyrmrider · Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 8:55 am Post subject:

edit
Spyware terminator also has a free real time module but nix the "free toolbar" will work with w98/me
also even those with low resources can run Win Patrol
not quite real time but Scotty goes on patrol on a regular basis and lots of other benefits

Tarq57 · Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject:

AVG 7.5 (both AV and AS) support will be withdrawn from the end of this year. (Or so the folk at Grisoft say.)
They have also reported in the past that it would be withdrawn in My this year, and in August.
This has left a lot of users confused.
Ewido/AVG AS is a pretty good application. I'm hanging on to mine, mainly out of curiosity, to see if updates really do stop at the end of the year. They probably will, but with the way Grisoft have been performing lately, they might forget to stop updating it. Razz

In ancient times, Spybot and AdAwareSE were the rock stars of the AS world.
I believe now those positions are taken by MBAM and Superantispyware.
Nothing wrong with Asquared. Don't mind slow scanning; maybe it's being real thorough.

Osage · Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 11:21 pm Post subject:

I will be sad to see avg antispyware go but for a somewhat special
reason. I am still stuck on dial up access and it was refreshing to see small daily updates only averaging 10 KB. I used to use a squared but had to drop it because of its huge and redundant updates were
sucking too much bandwidth. Super anti spyware pushes the envelope and I have to suspect they could do a better job in slimming down their updates.

Malware bytes may be in my future if avg antispyware is discontinued.

wyrmrider · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:35 am Post subject:

I'm not ignoring Malwarebytes or Superantispware or Counterspy or Spysweeper or A-squared
They all have excellent real time protection and may be worth the price for many.

Osage
Spybot and Windows Defender are about as light as they get
T-timer is much improved
Malware bytes forum recommends Spybot as an alternate- I agree
you can use others for on demand

let us know what you come up with- I have several friends on dial up

another underutilized tool is the Windows live one care free scanner
you may have noticed that A-squared has added an AV module for some extra punch

required disclaimer-- watch for false positives in all these products
google up any hits, quarantine - do not remove-delete

It's amazing how many products want to do a scan upon installation prior to update- go figure

Osage · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:11 pm Post subject:

To wyrmrider,

Who basically advised.

"Osage
Spybot and Windows Defender are about as light as they get
T-timer is much improved
Malware bytes forum recommends Spybot as an alternate- I agree
you can use others for on demand"

I do appreciate your comments and maybe should share what I now use for a multilayer security system.

I have comodo3 as a firewall with all other HIPS disabled in favor of the comodo HIPS, avira personal for an AV, and use windows defender, spybot S&S with tea timer, avg antispyware, superantispyware, spyware blaster, and spyware terminator. Because spyware terminator, teatimer, and comodo, seems to all act as decent process control, I do not use a specific process control program. And I also use various tweaks to browsers, use firefox, and regularly visit secunia to check for out dated programs,
and of course I regularly do all windows updates with my to my win XP pro while avoiding dangerous websites.

Somewhat knock on wood, its probably the most effective security set up I have ever had, and all that gets by is an occasional tracking cookie. Maybe I should set up a virtual sandboxie type set up and do more of my web browsing with a limited account with a full software restriction policy, but until I get nailed, I am resisting the extra work.

But any advice is always appreciated.

wyrmrider · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 4:35 pm Post subject:

Osage
pretty robust for someone on dial up
all good choices
you asked for it
hosts file with hostsman or other is one suggestion- light on resources and actually will speed up your surfing as ads will be blocked
t-timer and ms windows defender may overlap but if they do not conflict and you're happy so what

really to bad about EWIDO
Noscript or other script tool?
you are not running Comodo BoClean also are you?
I'm thinking it would overlap with T-timer also

win patrol is also handy and takes little resources

I cannot evaluate HIPS from COMODO

thanks for the feedback

Osage · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 4:47 pm Post subject:

To wyrmrider,

While the comodo3 host files may or may not be the best, comodo 3
does say they definitely do not recommend running any other flavors of host files along with comodo3. Advice I have taken rightly or wrongly in the way of clarification.

But that is my security set up, and if I do ever get nailed, it will have proved inadequate.

wyrmrider · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:41 pm Post subject:

I'm running hostXpert on this machine- W98 and hostman on an xp machine
both give both hphosts and mvphosts and sort out the duplicates
I also run spybot immunize which gives a few more individual entries
all seem to play nice together

which of your programs do you use to monitor any unauthorized changes to your host file?

do you lock down IE?
I think this is necessary even if you use firefox as bad guys will start ie for you
One thing I do is set up a shortcut to internet options from control panel
then I use Spybot to disable access to internet options from within internet explorer- in other words clicking internet options at the top if an IE page is disabled
This prevents the bad guys from easily getting into internet options
Spybot has some other neet tools like that

have you run secunia software inspector
removed all old java?
etc
I think you are good to go
Those darn click through vulnerabilities are tough to deal with
so many gotchas
pen drives for instance- worse than floppies ever were
I turn autorun off and run the MS protector goodie

Whippet · Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 8:05 am Post subject:

All the replies have made interesting reading....I thank you all. I would just say that I have tried Malwarebytes, and find that it seems to miss many of the tracking cookies pickrd up by AVG Antispyware....Euroclick,Yeildmanager and Burstnet to name but a few....maybe I will add Spybot S&D as a second scanner.

Gary R · Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 9:51 am Post subject:

A "tracking" cookie is just like any other cookie, in that it's just an encrypted text file that can be read by the site that created it.

The only difference is that "tracking" cookies can also be read by other sites, usually sites belonging to the same company or trading partners. As such they can theoretically be used to track your internet movements, but really are no significant security threat.

Because they're only text files, they cannot contain code which could be used to exploit or infect you.
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Gary R Administrator at Malware Removal University

If you've been helped, please donate to help with the costs of this volunteer site .... Spyware Warrior Donations

Tarq57 · Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:22 pm Post subject:

Try http://www.ccleaner.com/ for cookie management. Has a whitelist you drag the cookies you want kept into, all others are deleted when the application is run.
(Also cleans up temporary files etc, a more thorough "disk cleanup" than the windows one.)
Since cookies, although a minor privacy issue, are easy to monitor and a two-click operation to remove, I don't need an AS to find them.