As for the removal itself, in a majority of the cases Spy Sweeper left some spyware residue behind, removing only three of the eight samples, creating the possibility that some of the sample spyware could reinstall itself. For scanning and removing existing spyware samples, Spy Sweeper's caught six out of eight. In exclusive testing by CNET Labs, Spy Sweeper's active shields identified and blocked seven out of eight spyware samples we attempted to install, missing only one generic Trojan, Compare-prices.zip. That said, Spy Sweeper's remains one of the better antispyware apps we tested. Webrot Spy Sweeper 5.3 is very slow at a scanning, requiring more than one hour to scan our Acer Travelmate 8200 laptop other antispyware products completed their respective scans in around 20 minutes. The average user may not ever think to tweak their configuration settings. With traditional antivirus packages, full rootkit protection, when offered, is enabled by default. Webroot says that its advanced heuristic rootkit protection can be time- and possibly resource-intensive, so Spy Sweeper 5.3 makes it an optional feature. We also found that deep scans for rootkits-those pernicious little malware packages that hide deep within the system kernel-remain optional in this release. Not all of the defense shields within Spy Sweeper 5.3 are active by default. Webroot tells us that SpySweeper triages all identified malware, letting most of the malware interact the spyware components within the Spy Sweeper engine and sending the viral components to the Sophos engine only when necessary. Missing is the Realtime Sophos virus engine that looks for active infections, and this includes active infections from e-mail, IM, and other vectors. How come? Webroot includes just the On Demand Sophos virus-inspection engine, using it to identify and remove file infections already on the hard drive. But we were able to run a full Spy Sweeper scan concurrent with a ZoneAlarm antivirus scan. In theory, we should have experienced trouble, since both Spy Sweeper and ZoneAlarm include competing antivirus protection. We installed Spy Sweeper 5.3 with Antivirus with ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite up and running on our laptop. Within the Spy Sweeper Sweep section there are three options: Full Sweep scans all the files on your computer's attached drives Quick Sweep offers a fast and light pass of your main drive system and Custom Sweep allows you to select individual drives or folders or exclude extensions. SpySweeper uses protective shields to protect your hard drive, blocking spyware and adware as it attempts to download. Note: the trial copy of Spy Sweeper will not remove any spyware it identifies unless you purchase the full product we think this is wrong, and a crude way to force sales.Īside from antivirus protection, Spy Sweeper continues to provide first-class antispyware protection and adds new antirootkit protection in SpySweeper 5.3. We suggest all Spy Sweeper users wait and purchase the antivirus component in a future release. Current Spy Sweeper customers' apps will be automatically upgraded to version 5.3 (with an option to enable antivirus for $10 more). We question why Webroot would make antivirus an option-shouldn't it be standard? In light of this, we recommend buying the antispyware version only at $29. Spy Sweeper 5.3 is available for retail purchase or download, with or without antivirus enabled. For the same $39, we think you're better off with a traditional antivirus product that also includes antispyware protection, such as our Editors' Choice, Kaspersky. For now, we think Spy Sweeper 5.3 isn't ready for prime time. However, it took the longest to complete its scan, it didn't do so well at removing all traces of found spyware, and not all of Spy Sweeper's defense shields are turned on by default. As for traditional antispyware protection, Spy Sweeper 5.3 did well at shielding our machine from new spyware and detecting spyware already established. Webroot says that additional antivirus functionality will be added to later versions of Spy Sweeper, but for the moment, we're nervous about making Spy Sweeper our only antivirus protection. But the antivirus scanner included within Spy Sweeper isn't fully implemented and doesn't extend protection to common virus vectors such as e-mail or IM. And rather than build its own antivirus engine, Webroot has wisely partnered with top-rated U.K.-based Sophos Anti-Virus, which sells primarily to the enterprise market. Webroot Spy Sweeper 5.3 with Antivirus would seem like a powerful combination, given that McAfee, Norton, and Trend Micro all combine their antivirus and antispyware scans.
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