Spy Sweeper is an easy-to-use and effective application that identifies and eliminates certain programs designed to secretly collect information about you through your computer use, which anti-virus programs and firewalls do not detect. The software works in the background and notifies you when spyware attempts to load into your system's memory, when your Web browser home page is changed, or when a Web site installs cookies on your system. The only real gripes are that you can't resize Spy Sweeper's fixed-size window, which shows only a few lines of information at a time, and its use of system memory can render your computer useless while the software performs a scan. Nevertheless, Spy Sweeper is an excellent piece of software that can help you to minimise the loss of personal information when browsing the Internet.

Pros: Effective; provides spyware descriptions; automatic updates
Cons: Fixed-size window; slow scan speed


Spy Sweeper is a desktop security application that works with systems running Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP operating systems. The software is designed to identify and eliminate certain programs designed to secretly collect information about you through your computer use, primarily when you're online. In particular, Spy Sweeper targets spyware, which is generally referred to as any program that covertly gathers information through your Internet connection without your knowledge. Spyware is typically installed with shareware or freeware utilities - especially peer-to-peer networking applications - and often without your knowledge.

Quite often spyware is used to track your online activities in order to show you targeted ads, bypassing anti-virus and firewall protection by piggybacking on legitimate downloads to install on your system without your knowledge. However, in addition to wasting bandwidth, certain malicious spyware programs can gather information about your e-mail addresses, keystrokes, cookies and even passwords. Spyware programs are deeply-rooted applications that intertwine with core system functions to make manual removal tricky - if you ever realise that you've got spyware installed!

The software works by scanning your entire system using a database of thousands of known spyware threats. Spy Sweeper then quarantines any files or file traces that match the threat database, disabling the spyware's functionality while giving you the option to review and permanently delete suspect files or safely restore them if they are essential to the operation of applications. Interestingly, Spy Sweeper also provides a brief description of the nature of identified spyware.

On our test system, which is a typical example of a system used for general business purposes (including Internet access), Spy Sweeper identified and quarantined 10 spyware applications from a total of 107,527 files inspected. Without our knowledge, the system had some of the following spyware applications installed: Alexa toolbar (toolbar that dynamically inserts Web site links of partnered Web sites into the Web page you are currently viewing, based on your Web surfing habits), Cydoor (adware program that delivers targeted pop-up advertisements to your computer based on your Web surfing activities) and Spyware Nuker (spyware detection program that may have the ability to install other programs onto your computer without your knowledge). However, the scanning process took around 14m 39s and virtually rendered our test system useless due to memory constraints.

You needn't worry about keeping up to date with spyware definitions either, because Spy Sweeper automatically updates its database with new spyware definitions to help ensure ongoing protection from new threats, which can emerge on a daily basis. Spy Sweeper also actively monitors and protects your system memory, home page and new cookie additions.

Similar to good anti-virus and firewall applications, you can schedule Spy Sweeper to automatically scan at particular days, such as Monday to Friday, or on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Unfortunately, there's no option to set specific dates or times, such the 1st and 28th of every month. You can, however, set the software to scan on system start-up or shutdown.

Links:
Spy Sweeper 2.6 Web site
Spy Sweeper 2.6 trial (3.5MB)

BIOS, Mar 03, 04 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Security