webroot spy sweeper. Anyone use it?

[kleinma]

A customer of mine brought me a computer that had a virus which I got rid of, and they bought a copy of webroot spysweeper/antivirus prior to bringing the PC to me (I would not have suggested that product).

So whatever, I installed it for them since they already paid for it and installed one of the 3 licenses on another machine.

One thing I noticed when doing a scan (or sweep as they call it). This program doesn't ever seem to tell you what the hell it actually found. Sure, it shows you a nice pretty list with buzz words like "trojan" and "tracking cookie" but even trying to drill down on something as far as you can, it NEVER tells you what file it actually found and considers malicious. If I am wrong PLEASE someone tell me where to find this info, otherwise I find it incredibly shady for a security program to say "Hey I found all these bad things on your computer, but thats as much as I will tell you" It seems to me that makes it very easy for the program to turn up whatever it wants to ensure you keep buying it...

[abhijit]

I used the trial version a long time ago. It wasn't very impressive so I didn't buy it.

[BackWoodsCoder]

It seems to me that makes it very easy for the program to turn up whatever it wants to ensure you keep buying it...

I think you answered your own question. If i were you, I'd slap the person for actually spending money on AV protection and install something like avast for them which is free, works well, and is requires very little to no maintenance to keep updated.

It amazes me sometimes the programs people will install on their PC's.

[kleinma]

Anything that you BUY and then also tries to install a toolbar from some search engine during the installation would make me cancel the install and refuse to use the product. Sure, I will uncheck these extra installs when I am loading up some free app, but for a paided product to do that is rediculous. It is just as bad as the OEMs loading windows PCs with all the crap they do so they are slow out of the box.

Anyway, I did find the file locations eventually, after it installed a bunch of updates. I am wondering if there wasn't some issue they corrected recently or something like that.

What was funny is, as a test, I scanned, let it remove everythign (which was pretty much just cookies) then opened up a browser to msn.com, then closed the browser, and ran the scan again. Now I am sure MSN.com has cookies for itself and the advertisers, but for this app to come up and say your system is at risk from over 20 "items" when they are just simple cookies, it is just sad....

[kregg]

I used to use Webroot Spy Sweeper, and it was pretty good software - it would tell you everything and always keep itself updated, but then it started getting far too bloated down with this background scanning tool and constant update thing like it was an antivirus software or anything.

And this was about 4 years ago, so it would not surprise me if it has turned to crap right now.

If you want to look for spyware on the system, I cannot recommend enough at least using Spybot S&D. You can use Lavasoft Adaware, despite Adaware being extremely slow, but when I last used it (a couple of years ago), it did sort-of do the job. It's better than nothing, basically.

But then again, the last time I was really so up-to-date on the spyware cleaning scene was 4 years ago. Nowadays, every family member who gives me their computer leaves it until it is in such a bad shape, a 30 minute reinstall of Windows is a favourable idea than a week of installing spyware scanning tools, getting them up-to-date, and then scanning the PC to find "serious" threats like cookies.

[kleinma]

I tend to recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, coupled (if needed for those porn crazy customers) with MalwareBytes which doesn't run as "real time" protection (the free version). That way they get one app with real time protection, but can also run that secondary scan if needed.

[Arrow_Raider]

I tend to recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, coupled (if needed for those porn crazy customers) with MalwareBytes which doesn't run as "real time" protection (the free version). That way they get one app with real time protection, but can also run that secondary scan if needed.

That is exactly what I recommend people do and it works really well. Also, they are both free!

[BackWoodsCoder]

MS SE got top ratings for protection, it's one of the first things I install if I'm repairing someone's PC and they don't have it.

[Arrow_Raider]

I haven't gotten a chance to see how effective MSSE is at detecting and removing stuff yet, but it doesn't bog down your computer like Symantec or McAfee products do. It doesn't try to do a bunch of unnecessary things such as firewall and "Optimization" like other AV products do.

[kleinma]

Right, because MS has nothing to sell you (with regards to security) and doesn't really need to compete in the AV market. I feel like MSSE SHOULD just be some built in service that all windows installs come with by default, but that would likely result in pissing off those mentioned companies who make a living selling us protection. So they have to offer it as a free addon, just like IE and Media Player is in many countries, and like all that "live essentials" stuff is for us here in the US now.