Spyware

Has anyone in here tried Ad-Aware from Lavasoft? I just downloaded it and ran a scan of my two hard drives; it found about 400 "objects," but many of them look like cookies. I'm wondering if the software is smart enough to understand what a legitimate cookie is and what is not.

Anyone know?

Comments

I swear by Lavasoft AdAware. It takes out a lot of cookies, but most of them are cross-site marketing cookies that want nothing more than to know where else I go on the web. I can't recall it ever deleting a cookie I actually needed to get into a site or to remember my preferences. Besides, for every one "legitimate" cookie it kills, it stomps out a dozen evil processes, spyware applications, evil services, and more.

Even without venturing into the seedier sides of the web, it's amazing that after a month of browsing, I'll still have picked up a few bugs.

I agree. AdAware is like the comfort blanket I used to have (till I had to throw it out last week). As for the cookies, I don't know. Never really lost any cookies I needed.

On a tangent, just discovered I have spyware on my laptop. *sigh* Will have to run AdAware when I get home.

I use both Ad-Aware and SpyBot-Search & Destroy. They don't catch the same things, so I run both. It's amazing how many cookies and Trojans you can pick up through regular browsing.

That's reassuring, guys, thanks. I had visions of having to re-login to 40 newsletters and papers, not to mention all the blogs. Yikes!

I also use both Adaware and Spybot - they do catch different items.

I have both Adaware and Spybot, and use them regularly. It's amazing just how many sneaky piss-me-off spies in my computer they catch.

I try to run each every single day.

Be sure you do the updates before running the scans, though. Otherwise you might not catch everything that's there.

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