SpyEraser, anyone?

[mountainbikextremist]

I just peformed a free spyware scan from "Uniblue SpyEraser." It picked up these following supposed Spywares:

ISTbar- "high risk" 9 infections
StyleClickInc- "high risk" 2 infections
CWS- "high risk" 1 infection
MainPean Dialer- "high risk" 1 infection
CoolWWWSearch- "moderate risk" 1 infection
DoubleClick- "low risk" 1 infection

I understand the chance of this being just a scam, due to how they are advertising this program. "Scenario goes: free scan, over exagurate the risk of cookies or non risky files etc, causing the person to have a false sence of insecurity, who who then downloads the program." Vwla, $30 into Uniblue's pocket. So, for all of you who know more about anti spyware programs...is this the case, and is it worth buying?:confused:

BTW, I have my symantec anti virus up-to-date, and run a full system scan every night "computer stays on." I have a buddy that says that Symantec who makes norton, is junk... In addion to that, I have Windows Defender, which runs a full system scan ever night too. I ALSO have Spybot Search and Destroy, and I regularly keep that up to date, and run a scan regularly. However, none of these other 3 have picked up what I have listed above... Comments apreciated!:thanks:

[Pookie]

Huge subject, and yes, one spyware cleaner can find things another cleaner overlooked.

I helped a friend out last week who downloaded "Spy Sherrif", which was supposed to be a spyware remover, but was in fact spyware/adware. Even though he had Spybot S&D installed, the Spy Sherrif program prevented him from being able to go online to update the definitions. Pretty naughty.

This article offers pretty good advice as to recommended programs for spyware and antivirus.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

[foxyshadis]

This is the comprehensive list of rogue antispyware: http://spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm
SpyEraser isn't listed, so it might well be legit. If you have it show you the files, you can verify for yourself.

To see if it's yanking your chain about CWS or not, you can try CWShredder (http://www.trendmicro.com/cwshredder/).

Note, the after-infections that a lot of secondary scans pick up aren't real infections! They're files and registry keys that are harmless on their own, and weren't fully cleaned up by the regular engine. It's nice to have them off there, but hardly threatening. It always bothers me when even legit antispyware will list every file and reg key as a separate infection; even antivirus isn't that scare-marketing driven.

(Symantec/Norton home is total junk, as is McAfee and good only for slowing your system down and popping up nagware. The free ones are much better. Both make very good corporate versions, though.)