Spyware / malware.

Posted on January 9, 2005 No Comments

Traditionally, if anyone asks me about spyware or malware problems, I point ‘em at the 1,2 punch combo of Spybot Search & Destroy and Lavasoft’s AdAware. These two together traditionally make a great combo and can handle most of what comes your way. Most being the keyword there. CWShredder is very useful for going after the CoolWeb stuff that can really entrench itself into your machine and sometimes you may know you’re infected but AdAware or Spybot can’t get it - then you bust out your hardcore cap and go for Hijack This. Be warned, that one is not for dabbling with… you need to know what you’re after.

Now there’s a new candidate for the tool shed. Our friend’s in Redmond have acquired another company and released the beta of Microsoft AntiSpyware. I just installed it on a machine here at home and have it trundling along. It appears to have found two “threats” not picked up by AdAware or Spybot. One nice thing? If you’re running on XP (or presumably ME) it offers to create a restore point before removing anything. I’ll have to play with this thing a bit. Typically, I’m not always a huge fan of programs out of Redmond, but… I’ll be playing with it some more.

Of course, when it goes live you’ll probably have to pay for it.

Tags: malware, microsoft, spyware