Which is better, Spybot or Ad-Aware?

[jewishcow]

What's your opinion? Also I've read on some websites not to use both, just pick one. Why is this?

[Potato]

I say the exact opposite... use both. One finds stuff the other doesn't. :)

[babarfloyd]

I say the exact opposite... use both. One finds stuff the other doesn't. :)

Exactly. I use both. I first run Ad-Aware and then SpyBot. Haven't had any issues.

[Slycktom]

Yep, I use both. Like Potato said, one usually finds stuff the other doesn't...

[cjules13]

One's for spyware, one's for adware... that's like asking what's better: Oil or transmission fluid? Nether's better than the other, but you need both!

[vipp]

I use both of them, along with SpySweeper.

I tend to be overly cautious. :wings

[Lehk]

I have to say both are the way to go, I have been using both together for quite a while, and i use anti-vir for virus protection http://free-av.com

[shawners]

depends on which one you like miissing the registry up as well as some apps.

[RJ5500]

I personally prefer PestPatrol. It's a good adware/spyware sweeper.

[Dswissmiss]

I've asked the same question, because I'm a minimalist, and don't like using multiple programs for the same thing. But in this case, Ad-aware really does catch things Spy-bot doesn't, and vice versa. So as everyone already said, definately use both.

Also, I've seen a lot of warnings recently about spyware programs actually installing their own spyware, I know Ad-aware and spy-bot are clean, and that download.com only lets you download trusted programs in this category, but just beware of any lesser known versions out there.

[The Hunter]

i personally use both, and have had no problems with either.

[g-smooth2k]

I use both and No Problems to speak of.
As what Potato said, one usually finds stuff the other doesn't.

[shawners]

use NORTON anti-spam, and use norton 2004 version which finds ad-aware on your machine and quarantines virus at the same time.

[Brycen257]

Most people that I know use both Spybot and Ad-Aware and have had no issues or problems with either . As others have pointed out, both find things that the other does not. It also doesn't hurt to use other options such as Spyware Blaster and Spy Sweeper . Both are great extra protection for your computer.

[LordNIkon]

I use Spybot & Norton Internet Security 2004

[Jelsoft]

Which is better, Spybot or Ad-Aware?


Why not use both?

[phalkon30]

I agree that using both is a good idea. However, if you have to pick just one, I would go with Spybot. Its got more features than adaware (granted, most are advanced user features). The version currently in beta testing will be adding a bunch of new features, and a new user interface. Make sure to watch for it in the coming weeks.

[matrix2003]

I use Spy Sweeper, then Ad-aware, i've never actually liked SpyBot, just like everyone else is saying, one finds things that the other does not find, and what you said about a website saying not to use both, also, yes i use Norton personal firewall 2004/AntiVirus 2004 which is another good spyware/adware removal tool

[begoodbebad]

What's your opinion? Also I've read on some websites not to use both, just pick one. Why is this?

I've been using both and lately I noticed that if run Ad aware first there is never anything for Spybot to find....but if I run Spybot first then Ad aware always finds a few things which Spybot missed. This wasn't always the case and it may change but right now I have to say Ad aware is better. Also it scans my machine quicker, and it has never failed to download an update, which occasionally happens with Spybot.
When I set up or install a PC for someone else I always load Ad aware. It's a lot more friendly for the inexperienced user.

I can't see any reason not to use both, besides the fact that currently Ad aware is good enough that Spybot is not needed.

Edit: I also run Norton AV 2004 and no way does it find all the stuff that Spybot or Ad aware do. Don't rely on your AV alone.

[FrYGuY]

Use both.

AdAware is faster, and tends to catch more than Spybot for me, but...

Spybot has Immunize, and that at the very least helps.

Plus you can never be too secure, and all that.

[my name]

i use only spybot, i realy like the info on the bots it finds and also spybot can be upgraded from what ever version you use as for adaware, they make you download newer versions from thier site.

[nyvocals]

I use both with no problems plus ad-watch.

[freeloaders]

i always use both of them. first i use adaware then i use spybot as well as spyblaster. if i dont do this i cant sleep. knowing my pc has some bad cookies/adware

[unicornstastelikechicken]

I personally find spybot alone is good enough for me. I use to use adaware, but anymore just spybot seems to get it done fine for me.

[Induna]

Yes but Norton products tend to be bloatware and generally regarded as inefficient. A bit like participating in a cross-country run whilst handcuffed to a 400lb man, or woman. (Don't want to be perceived as sexist).

Or maybe I've fallen prey to the popular misconception that ALL Norton products are fatware (as opposed to phatware), and that perhaps I am foolhardy to believe such folly.

[aboi]

lets not forget spyblaster. i use all three plus sygate & norton antivirus. i feel safe now. for some reason i feel safer using firefox.

[Induna]

I use spyblaster, spybasher, spysmasher, spythrasher, spyasswipper and any other program that has spy in it's name, just to make sure.

[begoodbebad]

Yes but Norton products tend to be bloatware and generally regarded as inefficient. A bit like participating in a cross-country run whilst handcuffed to a 400lb man, or woman. (Don't want to be perceived as sexist).

Or maybe I've fallen prey to the popular misconception that ALL Norton products are fatware (as opposed to phatware), and that perhaps I am foolhardy to believe such folly.
yeah....you fell prey to a popular misconception:goodjob ! I won't call you foolhardy even tho it would be fun :;)
I think a lot of common attitudes about different software are hangovers from when people struggled to run unstable OS like 98 or ME on tiny HDD with sub 200Mhz CPU, 64MB RAM and then added a suite like Norton utilities to it....guess what took the blame for the crashes and freezes....of course now we all know it was Bill's fault. If your PC was made in the last 3 or 4 years you won't be having anxious evenings deleting stuff to gain that extra 15MB of space on your massive 2.3GB HDD....thank god those days are gone.

I was very suspicious of Norton products from hearing all that kind of stuff but I have tried a lot of alternative security and utility apps and now both my internet connected PCs are running Norton Internet Security and Systemworks (2003/4 Pro versions). Also I use Symantec pcAnywhere to control both from my main PC. One is a PII 350Mhz, the other an Athlon 2700. Both run XP Pro, the PII's OS being suitably stripped down with XPlite. Norton uses minimal...I mean minimal! resources... it really matters on the PII cos that's running emule 24/7 and is not exactly the most powerful box you ever used. Also Norton firewall doesn't leak memory which is a major issue when your PC is always on. Sygate does(which is a shame cos otherwise it is mostly very good) and so does ZA(er...sucks in many respects lol). As for all the different features/options..well you just switch off the bits you don't want, ain't hard. And it's the only automatic registry cleaner/junk file remover I used that never screwed up my machine or deleted something it shouldn't. Also is the only firewall I found that automatically correctly configures access for both host and client with Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing, pcAnywhere and my tiny 2 pc LAN. Other software firewalls are terrible to set up with ICS...either difficult or plain non functional.

Mr Norton I now claim my £5 for flattery beyond the call of software piracy....er....duty.

btw the idea of doing a cross country run shackled to a 400lb woman...it stirs something dark but compelling deep withing my pants...I mean my tortured psyche ....what does she look like....do you have her phone number? I wanna get muddy.

[Induna]

I see. So as well as being a shameless Norton fanboy you're a chubby chaser with a bit of a WAM fetish to boot.

If I told you that I don't use any protection for my PC, that includes firewalls, A-V apps, Adaware, spybot and whatnot, would you looked shocked? I'm really not security conscience myself, and I'm ashamed to admit that. Only a pop-up blocker built into my google bar is as far as I go. But I can see you go a lot deeper.



what does she look like....

I would make her look like Dawn French myself.

[IshareManyFilez]

Both should be used in unison because neither program can pick up on everything.

[Krell]

Sygate does(which is a shame cos otherwise it is mostly very good) and so does ZA(er...sucks in many respects lol)..


Please requalify this as "certain" build versions on certain OS's. I'm running Sygate with 11 block lists with HUNDREDS of IPs blocked. If you think you have a memory leak, use Task Manager to watch the mem size grow.

I have to agree that Symantic products are bloatware, and they are VERY intrusive in to the OS and the functionality of other proggies. They work, but at what price? (and of course im not referring to $ which a big fat 0 )

Regarding Spyboy and Ad Aware, yes, they both have strengths that the other doesnt, and this is not to say that they are weaknesses. You have to balance practicality with absurdity (sorry janett999) and keeping a system thats functional.

If youre THAT DAMNED insistant on running a system thats free of spyware, then why neglect the index.dat file, that gets sent to MS? Get you a copy of INDEX.DAT SUITE, and the SYSTEM SECURITY SUITE 1.04, they are both FREE.

Now run the INDEX.DAT SUITE and scan to find the index.dat files on your PC. Then, use the viewer to view your personal data.

Now run the SYSTEM SECURITY SUITE 1.04 and checkmark everything, and in the " User Defined Folders " select the paths to where the Index.dat files are located. Now press clear selected Items and reboot.

Now run the INDEX.DAT SUITE again, and view the gutted Index.dat files.

There are urls for MS that auto-propagate in there, telling you that your system is reporting behind your back, copy it to the clipboard, and put it in the Restricted Sites zone.



Just because youre not paranoid doesnt mean their not watching you.



.

[begoodbebad]

OK: Sygate: I used it for a long time and was totally happy with it on XP Pro SP1 until it reached build 5.0 something...I think I quit at 5.5 which has (had?) some serious problems. The applications crashes. It never left me vulnerable because I was using the Pro version and had enabled the option to block all traffic while not loaded. I had the same trouble on both my networked PCs (independently and while networked together) which are very different machines indeed, only real similarities being that they were both lean,clean installs and run flawlessly. I went back to build 5.0 or 5.01, not sure and it was fine it never crashed but it does leak memory, not hugely but it became a serious issue on the low spec 24/7 p2p box after around 4 days uptime. This prompted me to reluctantly start trying other firewalls on my old pentium box and the Norton one really surprised me. I am naturally wary of security apps that claim they can configure themselves but...it works. You can configure any aspect of it manually but when you do take the trouble to do it yourself it is (at first) disturbing to find you made all the same choices as the damn machine! One or two things you might want to do differently....because the auto config is actually more cautious and conservative regarding applications than a user might be. Once I realised this and felt a little more confident in the application I thought I'd install it on my other machine and see how it managed configuring itself for a LAN and ICS, as both client and host. It just got on with it and did it perfectly. This contrasts very strongly with the one really lame feature on Sygate, the network neighbourhood facility. It also demonstrates that ZA's approach is overly complex and not as secure(on top of its other faults). Both Sygate and ZA leave ports open by default when set up with ICS. So yeah I'm now a fully fledged Norton fanboy. The uptime on my PII is 6 days 21 hours right now and basically I never have to reboot except to patch the OS or upgrade the mule....which I guess I last did 6 days 20.5 hours ago lol. I just checked resource usage: None of the Norton apps is using so much as one percent of CPU...it's so low that they don'e even register. As for memory, the whole Norton security and utility bundle uses maybe 20MB which may be too much for some people but I am happy with it because everything works, routine maintainance is scheduled and automatic and I really have no worries and no errors. There is no personal data on the machine, no outlook express or WMP. The worst that can happen is I have to restart a few downloads. pcAnywhere can use a lot of RAM, maybe 40 to 60, dependant on how graphical your remote desktop is but that is an occasional thing....I just run the GUI in its simplest possible configuration and generally keep the jazzy overly exciting emule GUI minimized, so no worries....and no need to run it from the command line.

If youre THAT DAMNED insistant on running a system thats free of spyware, then why neglect the index.dat file, that gets sent to MS? Get you a copy of INDEX.DAT SUITE, and the SYSTEM SECURITY SUITE 1.04, they are both FREE.

Good advice:bling as ever, thanks Krell. That's my little project for this evening decided on.

Now can we get back to fat women, mud and unfortunate rashes?

I see. So as well as being a shameless Norton fanboy you're a chubby chaser with a bit of a WAM fetish to boot.
It's becoming harder to deny and harder to live without as each day passes:playboy

I leave my p2p PC running unattended sometimes for weeks so I took some interest in a)making it as secure as is reasonably possible and b) making sure that even if it is compromised it isn't a big disaster beyond the frustrations of losing 10 or 15GB of replaceable data.

[begoodbebad]

Now run the INDEX.DAT SUITE and scan to find the index.dat files on your PC. Then, use the viewer to view your personal data.

Now run the SYSTEM SECURITY SUITE 1.04 and checkmark everything, and in the " User Defined Folders " select the paths to where the Index.dat files are located. Now press clear selected Items and reboot.

Now run the INDEX.DAT SUITE again, and view the gutted Index.dat files.

There are urls for MS that auto-propagate in there, telling you that your system is reporting behind your back, copy it to the clipboard, and put it in the Restricted Sites zone.



Just because youre not paranoid doesnt mean their not watching you.



.I searched for and found all the index.dat files on my PC. Assuming this info is passed to MS then it tells Bill the following facts: My user account name and maybe 15 websites I have visited. That's it. It's no more than any website I visit knows about me and a lot less than a typical shopping or a typical common interest/membership based site. I'm happy with that. I reveal vastly more information if I buy something in a shop and fill out a warranty/support card or register a product in some way or pay with a cheque or card. I don't have the Norton privacy control (or any similar 3rd party utility) switched on, just IE6 privacy set to medium high and the google toolbar pop up blocker....hosts file was last updated ...a few weeks ago...slack:tilted I don't have any concerns at all about MS collecting personal data, I have never found any indication that they have attempted to collect any from me apart from by inviting me to register my OS on completing installation and the usual stuff if you sign up for hotmail. Strangely i decline their invitations and my hotmail account details are rather imaginative.

I'll check the index.dat files periodically just to see if anything of interest is in there. You never know.....

[stealthspy]

I personally prefer PestPatrol. It's a good adware/spyware sweeper. Actually, it's horrible with false positives. It's 100% sure that my Gnutella1 URI Taking Registry Key is XoloX Spyware. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. Not to mention all p2p apps are spyware unless you turn that off.

It has detected one thing all the others missed, so I still have it though...

[The Hunter]

I am going to make a note to this, after giving such a great review to the new Spybot beta, i ran into problems. I made no changes in the settings, but my pc became slower, and locked up. it got to the point that did some checking and it was spybot that was locking up on me. i uninstalled it, and to complete the uninstall i had to remove teatimer, and a few other things left behind. Also i just finished doing a system restore to clean things up. i just wanted to let folks know about any problems.

[ROMANTICGUY50]

I had trouble with Spybot It causes alot of website to become resstricted. It affected even my own website. I tried to make changes to my website and was not able to once i downloaded it. It seems to make changes to the restricted sites. Many I wanted to view.

[aerosoljunkie84]

i use ad-aware. works well on my computer.

[davec8]

I use adaware. I tried spybot and as soon as I installed it most of the other programs on my computer stopped working for some reason and was having trouble connecting to many websites. I uninstalled it and everything started working fine again. I downloaded adaware and haven't had a problem with it in about a year of using it and I think it finds all adaware on my pc.

[bLoOdBaTh]

spybot is better ... but currently i'm using spy sweeper and spyware blaster

[goNucks]

Ad-aware appears to be more thorough, and I've noticed spybot rarely has updates, so i'll think ad-aware is better, but no harm in using both.

[Omyn]

I like a combination of the two.

And when I feel ultra-paranoid I also use Bazooka on the side to scan for things, although it doesnt remove them it does tell you what you have and how to remove it.

[bigwilly949]

i use the same three software, ad-aware, spybot, amd bazooka. all free to use.

[stecbine]

Does not matter which one is better they are both excellent in their own ways. USE THEM BOTH! And your almost guaranteed to keep your system clean!

[dock0184]

Neither, I use Tiny Personal Firewall. It has sandboxing that allows me to control which files can access the system. No spybot/adware needed =)

[FrozenShadow23]

SpySweeper is my program of choice, donno what you guys think about it though.

[.:sp00ky:.]

spybot,ad-aware and even though no 1 seems to like it i use pestpatrol now and again because it has found stuff that others havnt(but yes it does find over stuff like normal p2ps you have to mess around with the options and then it works fine)

[The Hunter]

Janet, I disliked pest patrol so much that i uninstalled it. False positives, were the main reason.

[The Hunter]

Hmm, it sounds like its time for me to upgrade. cough.

[Toog]

neither: it's better to use both.