anti spyware

[lodore]

i have spysweeper,spybot and windows defender for my anti spyware protducts, but i was reading about a spyware horror story, and the person who got infected had practicly ther same anti spyware setup i have. i am ver paranoid about spyware and was thinking is there any other anti spyware protection you can recccomend such as more real time and on demand. but i need anti spyware real time that doesnt interfear or conflict with f-secure real time or spyweeper real time.

i was looking at spyware blaster by javacoolsoftware but i dont know if i can haveing it running along side what ive got already

[UltraMagnus]

windows defender does active scanning all the time unless you specifically disable it

[lodore]

i did disable the real time of windows defender because i wasnt sure if it would conflict with spysweeper that was my main concern

[UltraMagnus]

hmm, good point

i suppose you should choose, who do you trust more? M$ or spysweeper?

[Lee H]

I used to use adware and spybot but found that the spyware doctor from pctools as this has a great activeX applet scanner/protection system and it found stuff that the previous 2 didn't.

If you pop to their website there is a 30 day trial to see what it's like.

[Paranoid2000]

i have spysweeper,spybot and windows defender for my anti spyware protducts, but i was reading about a spyware horror story, and the person who got infected had practicly ther same anti spyware setup i have. i am ver paranoid about spyware and was thinking is there any other anti spyware protection you can recccomend such as more real time and on demand.

Anti-virus/trojan/spyware scanners rely on a database of known malware to detect any nasties. What this means is that no scanner can be a 100% solution since there will always be a delay between when malware is written/released and when the anti-X companies analyse it, create a signature and push out the updates.

Having said that, most people get burnt by not running security software or not having it set up properly (e.g. disabling signature updates - these should be done daily nowadays) while doing something "dangerous" online (e.g. downloading a program from an anonymous source like P2P/IRC/Usenet or visiting a malicious website using Internet Explorer).

In your case, Spysweeper is one of the best anti-spyware applications (PC Tools' Spyware Doctor also getting top ranking) and F-Secure uses Kaspersky and BitDefender anti-virus engines (both top ranking, especially Kaspersky). At this point, if you need more security, you should focus on reducing (or eliminating) vulnerabilities on your system - specifically by using an alternative browser to IE (both Firefox and Opera are free and offer signficant usability enhancements) and disabling unneeded Windows services. Also ensure you have a properly configured firewall before going online (don't rely on Windows' own, it is too easily bypassed if any malware gets onto your system).

If you wish to go further than this, then consider software that can control what programs are run and limits their actions - these do not rely on signatures at all but do rely on you knowing what to allow and what to block (mouse/touchpad drivers would request similar access to Windows' mouse/keyboard handling as a keylogger would for instance). Examples of these include Process Guard, System Safety Monitor or Online Armor (though OA requires online activation).

i was looking at spyware blaster by javacoolsoftware but i dont know if i can haveing it running along side what ive got already

Spyware Blaster works by disabling known "bad" ActiveX applications so it shares a weakness with other scanners - it has to know the IDs of malicious applets before they get blocked. Ditch IE and you never need worry about ActiveX again (neither Firefox nor Opera support it).

[lodore]

i am using firefox since it is better and more secure than IE and i use the firewall in f-secure but soon im gonna get rid of f-secure and replace it with outpost firewall and nod32 and since nod32 has better heristic detection i should be better protection.

f-secure is a great product no doubt about that but it has conflicts with spysweper.

so soon my secuirty setup will be nod32,spysweeper and outpost firewall how does that sound as a secuirty solution ?

[lodore]

lee at scan, what was your previouis 2 anti spyware programs before spyware doctor?

also i have thought in the past about trying spyware doctor since it is as top rated as spysweeper.

is spywaredoctor as effective as spysweeper?

also how much resourse does spyware doctor use?

btw i should of put this is one reply but oh well