Look, spyware, viruses, worms and trojans are bad enough, but paying money for software to protect against these things and finding out the software is crap can be even worse.
Recently, I found another anti-spyware product that I feel fits the category of crapware. Now, keep in mind, the software I’m about to opine about is “highly rated” by some computer mags. Maybe that ought to tell you something about computer mags, as well…
I subscribe to a lot of computer newsletters, RSS feeds from comp mags, etc. Some are better than others. Brian Livingston, for example, has one of the best Windows-related newsletters out there, one that is about as transparent as you can get when it comes to his process of arriving at recommendations, etc.
Others are not so transparent. Sometimes it takes a while to weasel out the financial incentives a newsletter or mag may have for handing out a recommendation for a product, often a product not worth recommending.
Such a product, IMO, is Spyware Doctor. It advertises (often in a thinly-disguised “review-ad” that does little more than parrot company propaganda) all over the web, including in so-called newsletter “reviews.” as offering a free download and scan for spyware.
I’ve tried this piece of crap out and here’s what happened: it scanned my computer and found 16 spyware problems. Oh, my! Not good. Except… each of the problems it found were false positives. Each and every “problem” was related a legitimate, spyware-free piece of software. Not one legitimate problem was discovered, although one was labeled a “high risk” (yep: it was a legitimate piece of software).
After delivering the alarming news, the software offered to rid me of these legitimate pieces of software if I would only pay to register it.
Now, how many folks do you think fall for this? Naive users who download, scan, discover “problems” (some of which could potentially be legitimate problems on some users’ computers), PAY for the license and then “clean” their computers of legitimate programs?
Enough to keep the software available.
My advice? If you MUST try these things, first do an anti-spyware scan with Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware (the real one from lavasoftusa.com) and even Microsoft Anti-Spyware. With that as a baseline,
1.) Create a Restore Point
2.) Download the software you want to try and SCAN IT with an up-to-date anti-virus (heck, scan it with another anti-spyware product before and after installation, too)
3.) Perform a scan, and when it returns results, don’t just accept its identification of problems
a.) copy the file names listed
b.) search the web using your fav search engine for
references to that file name
c.) note all the characteristics of the file listed in your
web search and compare to the files as found on
your computer
You may discover, as I did, that the “problems” found are false positives (or simply fake problems to get you to buy the product?).
BTW, even legitimate anti-virus software can register some false positives, although I’ve found the problem to be most prevalent with Microsoft’s Anti-spyware software (it keeps insisting, for example, that VNC is spyware. Go figure. Maybe M$ should take it up with Bell Labs. *heh*).
Noted at Bacon Break — those bastards!
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