Spy Review

As a computer user you must be aware that whenever you are connected to the internet – and lots of people are online most of the time – your system is open to vulnerabilities and attacks. Forget about spam emails and phishing, there are people out there who exploit these ‘leaks’ in your computer systems for data collection, for spying on your net usage and for unleashing viruses and Trojans on your computer.

The absolute worst that spyware can do is identity theft and then you are in trouble. There is sophisticated spyware which can actually analyse your keystrokes and finds out all your passwords and log-in ids, and that is why it is of utmost important that you have very good anti-spyware installed on your system.

How Anti Spyware Works

It scans your computer just like anti-virus software does and the good ones offer real time protection. It detects and removes the spyware/malware from your computer without affecting the speed and performance of the computer. If you can still use the computer while the scan is going on and if it also provides support and updates then it is a reasonably good software.

Unfortunately, no matter how good an anti spyware software you have, not one will be able to remove all the spyware/malware from you computer and that’s why experts recommend that you use more than one so that you are safer.

The Best Anti Spywares in the Market

There are two kinds of software you can buy: one is anti-virus along with anti-spyware and the other is only anti-spyware (which can be used with any other anti-virus software).

Among the two-in-ones, Vipre has received PC Anti-Virus Reviews number one rating for its ease of use, excellent anti-virus and anti-spyware detection, fast scanning speed and being light on computer resources.

Next comes BitDefender which gives real time anti-virus and anti-spyware protection along with removing keyloggers and rootkits, preventing phishing attacks and reducing the chances of identity theft.

Kaspersky comes in at number three, though it has managed to garner quite a fan following after it has increased its ease and speed of use.

The Stand-Alones Which You Can Purchase

Among the stand-along anti-spywares are Spyware Doctor AntiSpyware 2009, which offers improved protection, risk evaluation, rootkit removal and more. There is Zone Alarm Pro Antispyware 2009 which offers identity theft protection and a firewall and is cheaper than Spware Doctor. CounterSpy V2 Antispyware 2009 comes in third only because its installation is not that easy.

The Stand-Alones Which Are Free

If you don’t want to buy then it is better to have some protection than none, though almost everybody agrees that the free versions do not do as good a job as the paid for ones.

Microsoft has a download of free Microsoft Windows Defender 1.1 which is an anti-spyware program for users of genuine Windows XP.

Download Microsoft Windows Defender 1.1 from Microsoft

Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition Free is not bad, but it will not detect everything. You can download it from here:

Spybot Search & Destroy is another anti-spyware program which also offer immunization features.