Spybot - Search And Destroy

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Spybot – Search And Destroy is one of the most popular anti-spyware programs available. It is backed by a good reputation and a high success rate when it comes to detecting spyware threats.

Spyware is bad for your computer in so many ways, the first and most important factor is the breach in your privacy that results from having spyware installed on your PC. Added to that Spyware slows down your computer and uses up your Internet connection, which can cost you a lot of money if you pay a premium for your bandwidth.

Spybot is one of the hand-full of tools available for combating spyware infections on your PC. It has regularly updating definitions which allow it detect even the newest threats. It is able to detect spyware installed on your computer and effectively remove them, without effecting the rest of your PC.

Real-Time Protection

One of the most recent additions to Spybot is real time protection. It is now able to stop spyware from ever getting on your PC. This will, for example, not allow Internet Explorer to install certain Active X programs which have proved to be malicious.

Spybots real time protection is not great however, provoding only limited protection at the cost of high PC resource consumtion.

Advanced Mode

Spybot has several options available for the advanced user, who knows exactly what they want from their spyware protection software. Advanced users can configure settings such as “Ignore Tracking Cookies”, where spybot will no longer consider tracking cookies threats. You can also schedule automatic scans and updates.

Conclusions

Spybot is a bit slow when compared to what else is currently available. It has also fallen behind other freeware anti-spyware programs out there. We don’t recommend that you use Spybot as your primary anti-spyware tool, but rather as a backup to one of the more powerful tools available.