Spy Sweeper > Ad-Aware!?
 

Anyone have any experiences with Spy Sweeper, trust it or what have you? I have some cumputers in the shop, have some time on my hands and after running a full hdd scan with Adaware 1.81, Personal. defs latest. (199 items found, mostly cookies) ran a trial of Spy Sweeper. 703 items later it was done scanning! W/o removing, ran a spybot S&D scan, found 1 item.

Laptop been having popups keep coming back, redirections etc. Run the same set of tools, Adaware, Spybot, Hijackthis. Then throw Spy Sweeper at it, 1154 items later the system is clean.

Is Spy Sweeper fluffing the results to look good or is my fav spyware remover that far behind the times and needing to be replaced!?

Well, the Spyware Weekly Newsletter for February 4, 2004 gave it a good review, and they are a trustworthy site.

Awsome. I will check it out to see if it really does blow Ad-Aware/Spybot out of the water.

well since im a lazy bastard, I think i'll wait for someone to use it on this site, and tell me :D thanks :D:D:D

I ran the trial version and it found 10 things that Ad-Aware/Spybot didn't pick up. (Ran them both right before running spy sweeper.)

I'm scanning with the full version now to see if it will pick up anything more.

Edit: After running the full version with updated definitions, it didn't find anything new.

I too find it to catch more junk than ad-aware or spybot (although it does seem to scan a little more slowly)

so is Spy-Sweeper the next standard spyware program everyone should have? :D Like how everyone has ad-aware and spybot now?

I had been using Ad-Aware for a while now. If its very that good maybe I should try spy sweeper.

I've found with ad-aware and spybot that I can run one followed by another and there are always additional items picked up. Each company has their definitions setup with what they're aware of, but they aren't always consistent.

Is it possible that that the additional items you picked up with spy-sweeper are because of this as well?

Have you tried running spy-sweeper first and then ad-aware or spybot to see if anything is missed that way?

Just curious.

Quick question about spysweeper:

What is the difference between the free download and the paid version?
I couldn't find the answer on their site.

Apparently you can't update the definitions with the free version. You need the full version for updates.

I don't like Spysweeper. It not only requires a paid version for updates but it runs at least three memory resident applications at boot. I don't need an application running on my computer to make sure someone doesn't switch my home page.

I used spysweeper and it caused some major bloatage and took forever to finish up. 2.4 P4 533, 512 PC2100. Shouldn't have been a problem with a normal program, but running the last stages of this program, quarantine and total removal took way more real and processing time than I like to dedicate to a simple spyware remover. To its benefit though, it did get rid of some stuff that adaware, spybot and spyware blaster have let slip through the cracks. Too much bloat and having to pay for updates for a program that seriously slows down good systems is just too high a price for me.

I ran it, and it found a few minor things that nothing else picked up (cookies, IIRC), but like others said, its bloated and requires payment for definition updates.