Spyware Warrior

shikamaru_nara · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 8:27 pm Post subject: spy sweeper?

is anyone running this program and do they find it helpful at all and would they recommend it to others?

suzi · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:15 pm Post subject:

Hi shikamaru_nara - welcome to spyware warrior.

Spy Sweeper is a good program and well recommended. I've been using it myself in conjunction with Ad-aware and Spybot Seach & Destroy. I recommend people to have two (or more) spyware removal programs because each one with catch things that the other does not, especially on a severely infected machine.
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shikamaru_nara · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:26 pm Post subject:

thank you very much Smile

, this is my first time to this website i came upon it through i think the dell website and im enjoying the information im reading.

TeMerc · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:29 pm Post subject:

Hello shikamaru_nara. Welcome to the forums.

I too use SpySweeper, great miinds think alike, eh Suzi? Laughing

Altho, it is a pay app, and the others Suzi mentioned, are not( I have those too!!), it was well worth it.
And the latest version now has a couple of nice features. It has a 'Favorites' alerter, which asks you when an fav is added if you want to keep it. And it has a registry alerter now as well.
When people ask about furthering their protection, I recommend either SpySweeper, or AdAwarePlus.

Hope that helps some.
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wawadave · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:37 pm Post subject:

its a legitimate spyware remover program!!!!!!
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wyrmrider · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:27 pm Post subject: spy sweeper and EARTHLINK

WEBROOT spy sweeper comes included with my earthlink account
however
when you start spy sweeper it checks the proxy server boxes on ALL of your connections If you have it load at boot it's a real pain

you have to back in and uncheck ALL of them manually
this is supposed to be fixed in Earthlink 2005

does this happen with the stand alone product?

when you start spysweeper from earthlink I can see NO update activity It is NOT clear how update works It checks around 250 definitions

Spy Sweeper does NOT respond to e-mail HELP requests on the above subjects

Spy Sweeper has NO forum that I can find

Spy Sweeper is unclear on what it has found
for instence what is
COOL WEB...???

Watch for false positives

At this point I think the "free" earthliink service is just a come on for their "paid" service

their SPYAUDIT is a known come on

free scan only programs are
ALURIA
Pest Patrol
Spyware Doctor

all can find interesting things however they do not fix anything without using the pay version try and see

wyrmrider

tallbballman21 · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:37 pm Post subject:

i found this website through the dell website too

TeMerc · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:48 pm Post subject:

wyrmrider · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 3:07 pm Post subject: Earthlink Version only

I
Maybe I was not clear enough that my comments applied to the bundeled EARTHLINK version only

There it's called Earthlink Spy Blocker or Spyblocker

the cool web they mention is not the cool web you speak of and there is no way that I can find where it is installed etc etc
so that I can verify I'll check the log later

the other 3-4 hits I ususlly find are bogus

Just tried again no update except maybe through earthloink update

Maybe they just do not answer e-mail from earthlink clients
Earthlink help is usually clueless on spy sweeper and Accelerator

spy audit does not fix
of course spy sweeper does sorry I was unclear on this

spy sweeper finds 1 old dap file
aluria finds 10
spyware doctor finds 25
and aluria and spywaredoctor show you wher they are so you can remove them by hand
(ad-aware and spybot show clean, HJT shows 3)

spy sweeper did have 5000 dap add and add1 files quarantined!!
NAV and speedisk hung on Quaran~1 ...
noticing this behaviour I deleted several megabytes of quarantine files so watch your quarantine files with spy sweeper

I'll download the stand alone version
I'm thinking that it might not be the same

Wyrmrider

TeMerc · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 3:11 pm Post subject:

Nick · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 5:23 pm Post subject:

If it is customized by Earthlink, who knows what may have been changed.

I find Spysweeper overall to be good, but it tends to have a few more false positives than it should. They don't have a public feedback forum like Spybot S&D and Ad Aware do, so I wonder how they get feedback for their detection database. Als, the resident shield tends to use more resources than I think it should. There have been several topics about that at Spywareinfo.com forums and Wilders. I also find the resident shield tools duplicative of free tools that are avalable.
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Scaramouche · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:31 pm Post subject:

Spy Sweeper has come a long way from their first version but I'm still not 100% in love with it. I find the false positives especially troublesome, and I think they misreport counts sometimes.

At one point for me (forget which exact version but it was about 2 months ago) Spy Sweeper detected it's own downloaded update file as spyware (I'm assuming because they used a freetext comparison and found certain spyware names in the binary somewhere).

As for the counts I had a case where I had one infection, and Spy Sweeper detected it as three spyware different installations. It then counted the same registry entries THREE TIMES, one for each infection, displaying something like 280 components instead of the actual 50 or so the infection had.

Neither of these are hanging offenses of course (the false positive on the update file was relatively benign, and the three/one installation was still removed properly), but it still concerns me how the counts seem so inflated. Invariably if I scan with multiple removal tools Spy Sweeper has the highest count, though it's not often justified. I think they're going for a quantity over quality approach and I don't know if it's accurate.

I'm not slagging Spy Sweeper really though, as I said they've come a long way. Also in the interests of full disclosure yadda yadda see my sig.
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Thoradon · Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:16 pm Post subject: Notify Webroot

I have found the best way to tell webroot about a problem or idea is to email there support from there web site.

The update being found as spy ware was made by them in order to get everyone using their software to the newer version of software..

angeldust · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:27 am Post subject:

So Suzi you, and I guess the others also, use Webroot's pay version but did you know that there is a free program with the "same" name (Freeware)? Anybody ever try it? It is at http://www.spysweeper.com/ which is a very poorly designed site & had me wonder about it. In fact that is where I went to look for SpySweeper when I saw it in Suzi's sig (maybe add Webroot in front?).
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Nick · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 2:20 pm Post subject:

This is the official Webrootpage: http://www.webroot.com/ That spysweeper.com site is some knock off using webroot's spysweeper name. There is a free trial version of Webroot's Spysweeper avalable as well. Just click on the try for free link on this page: http://www.webroot.com/wb/products/spysweeper/index.php
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suzi · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 4:22 pm Post subject:

Angeldust, you wrote:

angeldust · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:13 pm Post subject:

Sorry Suzi, it is actually in TeMerc's sig. my bad Embarassed

I have listed this forum as an equal to The Tech Support Guy's at the Avant Browser Forum for help.
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