Spy Sweeper effective?

[kv]

I'm not familiar with this app, although I've heard of it and have seen some positive press. I'm happy with Spybot and Ad-Aware myself.

However, my GF's notebook was acting strange and had the symptoms of a spyware infection. She has Spy Sweeper installed with a subscription and it's set to update weekly, she ran scans regularly.

After much arguing and heated debate, I convinced her to download and install AdAware, which prompty discovered 3 pieces of spyware.

Before removing them, I had her manually update SpySweeper and run a scan (took probably 4x as long as Ad-Aware). It didn't find any of the spyware, although it did locate most of the tracking cookies AA also found.

So I've converted her to AA, but I'm curious as to anyone's experience with Spy Sweeper... Personal security apps (firewalls, spyware etc.) are one area where I think the freeware often matches or exceeds commercial offerings, and I'm wondering if this just reinforces my opinion or I'm mistaken...

Interested in anyone's $0.02...!

Cheers,
KV

[Ridgerunr]

No personal experience with it,cause I also rely on AAW & Spybot. But here's what users at C/Net have to say...

http://reviews.cnet.com/4852-5_7-21000905.html?tag=uo

[fink]

I use Spysweeper on my brother's computer (I do all the maintenance on it remotely). He also has Adaware & spybot. I run all three of them at least once a week and have done so for months.

I purposely check to see if one of them finds things the others haven't and overall it's a wash. Each one will occasionaly find some things that the others will miss...only cookies now that the system is kept clean but there were some other relatively minor things at first that they all did or didn't detect.

I'd say it's a pretty good program overall.

[jerryctx]

Fink makes a good point; Spyware detectors are like anti-virus programs, what each detects varies day by day.

Today, program A might detect malware X but miss Z. Program B is the opposite. Tomorrow, they will both detect X and Z but one will detect P and the other Q.

Anti-virus varies by when the virus is discovered, when the vendor posts a new signature file, and when the users download the file. Spyware has an additional variable; its not always obvious if a "reporting" program is benign. For example, is it sending confidential info or is it just checking for an update?