Spyware Reviews - May 2005
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Here are our latest spyware reviews and spyware removal product comparisons. We recommend only reputable and effective spyware removal products no rogues or disguised spyware installers. Our goal is to be your best source of independent spyware reviews, so if you have comments or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us!
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We gave top honors to Aluria Softwares Spyware Eliminator (read review). This product protects against more spyware than any other product on the market. Weekly updates and a reasonable price make it a good choice for nearly everyone. You also get a variety of "evidence eliminator" type functionality that you won't find in other spyware removal programs. Aluria offers a free scan to determine if any spyware is on your system.
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Try It Now!Lowest Price: $29.99
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Below you will find side-by-side comparisons of the top spyware removal products. You can click through to read detailed reviews of the products, or scroll through to the end of this page to see summarized anti
spyware reviews.
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Outstanding |
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Average |
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Poor |
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Beware! |
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| Download Link |
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| Overall Rating |
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| Spyware Test Score |
82% |
71% |
77% |
61% |
50% |
54% |
51% |
42% |
26% |
20% |
| Protection |
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| Ease of Use |
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| Stability |
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| Support |
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| Purchase Price |
$29.99 |
$29.99 |
$29.95 |
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$39.99 |
$39.99 |
$39.95 |
$29.99 |
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$29.95 |
| Read Review |
Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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Read Spyware Review
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| Overall Blocking and Removal |
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| Number of Spyware Programs Recognized |
35000 |
28,500 |
26,028 |
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21,000 |
573 |
| Detect Spyware in RAM |
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| Detect Browser Homepage Change |
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| Scan Internet Ports |
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| Scan Startup Settings |
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| Detect Tracking Cookies |
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| Detect Keyloggers |
Some |
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Some |
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| Detect Spyware when it tries to install |
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| Detect Registry Entries |
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| Remove Spyware during startup |
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| Immunize Functionality |
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limited |
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| Speed |
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| Summary of Results |
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| Detailed Scan Results |
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| Allows Rollback |
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| Operating System Compatibility |
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| Works well with Browser |
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| Technical Support |
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| "No Questions Asked" refund policy |
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| Documentation |
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| Live Update Feature |
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| Update Frequency |
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| Updates Included in Purchase price |
1 year |
1 year |
1 year |
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1 year |
1 year |
1 year |
Forever |
Forever |
Forever |
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More Spyware Reviews
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While still providing good protection against spyware , Spy Sweeper's effectiveness seems to have lagged in the past several months. Nevertheless, it offers an excellent user interface and relatively frequent updates.
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PC Tools has made major improvements to the latest version of their software. In addition to an updated UI and better protection, the product also includes a number of additional tools that power users will find extremely useful.
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What was once a top-rated product has begun to get mired in Microsoft's corporate bureaucracy. The effectiveness of this product has slipped in the past two months and it's full of annoying usability problems. We recommend taking a pass, or at the most, using it as a backup solution to another product.
Pest Patrol is a good product with superior protection, although it is priced higher than our other top picks. We found that it had a somewhat confusing interface. It may be a better pick for business settings as it had an over-enthusiastic tendency to flag file sharing applications as spyware.
McAfee Antispyware provides average protection against spyware. The product sports a beautiful user interface, but has a number of annoying installation and usability quirks. It is more expensive than other products, and McAfee's marketing team takes every opportunity to upsell you on their other software, which results in a product that borders on "adware" itself.
While Ad Aware offers comparable protection to Spy Sweeper and Spyware Eliminator, it lacks some basic features (such as scheduling) and the user interface is very difficult to use. It is also priced higher than the other products. Some users report that the program doesnt install correctly and there are reports that it has even corrupted hard drives, making some PCs unbootable (we did not experience these problems on our test computers). Despite lavasoft's claim that Ad-Aware protects against over 24,000 spyware programs, we found its coverage to be lacking.
Spybot S&D is the most well-known freeware removal tool on the market. The best part about Spybot S&D is that its free! The worst part is that you get what you pay for. Because Spybot S&D gives away their product, they cant afford to give good customer support, nor is their product particularly stable on Windows XP. On our test platform, Spybot S&D brought our browser (Internet Explorer 6) to its knees. After installation, we were unable to download anything in under two minutes, and web pages took an excruciatingly long time to load. Alas, we fixed the problem by running Spy Sweeper! At last count, Spybot S&D only effectively protected against about 200 spyware products. If you can afford a modest fee, we highly recommend you choose a commercial product.
A controversial product, NoAdware is heavily advertised on the internet as an effective spyware removal tool. Our tests indicate differently however. We uncovered a product that was unable to detect real spyware on our computer, and instead tried to fool us with "false positives". Unfortunately, some of the spyware is claimed to detect were actually operating system files and legitimate software, including Apple's Quicktime player. We were extremely disappointed with NoAdware and recommend that you stay away from this product.
PALSol put in a disappointing performance in our spyware effectiveness test. The combination of a clunky user interface along with poor detection and removal capabilities makes this product a no go. We suggest you look elsewhere.
SpyKiller is a barebones spyware removal tool that provides little more than the most basic detection functionality. It does not provide detailed scan results and so we werent able to conclusively determine its effectiveness. However, follow-up tests on clean PCs indicate that SpyKiller may be finding false positives in an effort to goad users into purchasing the product.
This bare bones, low quality program has few features and failed to remove any of the common spyware we tested for. In addition, it detected a number of spyware programs that were not really installed on our test computers. It is one of the poorest performing product of any we tested, with an overall rating of 12.5%.
While StopZilla is a well-marketed product with a compelling website (and was even mentioned on Jeopardy!), the product itself protects against very few spyware programs.
