Labs

Anti-Spyware software

Using our dedicated ultra-secure security testing lab, we set up a web server loaded with different malicious downloads. These files, provided by security company MessageLabs, were brand new and were all present on publicly available web servers at the time of writing.

The fact that they are so new means that any security program capable of detecting them would have to be either very clever, with powerful heuristic detection, or backed up by a powerful service capable of finding the majority of spyware on the internet. If you spend good money on security software, you should expect an effective service that's capable of providing comprehensive anti-spyware updates.

We expect a good anti-spyware program to be able to prevent spyware getting on to your machine. Many of the utilities here are capable of tracking suspicious settings, preventing certain settings from being changed and providing varying levels of spyware removal. However, our tests concentrate on the ability of these programs to prevent an infection in the first place.

Programs that provide real-time protection, and that are powered by efficient and wide-reaching anti-spyware services, should be more effective at preventing infections than free scanners such as Ad-Aware, which attempt to clean up after the event.