Labs

Pest Patrol is Computer Associates' anti-spyware program. Although it is a standalone application that can be installed and used on its own, it comes with the eTrust Internet Security Center. This is an interface that combines CA's consumer security products in the same way McAfee's Security Center does for McAfee's products. It has little use other than to make you aware of eTrust Antivirus, Firewall and Anti-Spam, and the fact you don't have them - yet.

The spyware utility itself has a simple, almost sparse appearance. Its interface has a Scan option, which lets you run a so-called Standard Scan on

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parts of the system where spyware usually hides, or optionally you can choose to scan specific folders or drives. Customised scans also include a Standard Scan.

The only other menu option gives access to Advanced Settings, which are not very advanced compared to most of the other software tested here. You can turn the real-time protection on and off, view the log file and manage the nasties jailed in the Quarantine. The only other option of note is the chance to join the eTrust Prevalence research programme, which lets the company monitor the spyware that is being detected most frequently.

We'd like to report that Pest Patrol's stark appearance belied a killer anti-spyware engine, but its performance in our tests was disappointing. The real-time protection ignored most of our spyware samples as they were installed, although it did prevent the rogue anti-spyware utility installing.

A standard scan failed to detect the rootkit, but scanning the whole C: drive found it. We ran one more system scan, and the software found another bit of spyware that it missed the first time around. Ad-Aware found one more.

For its price, Pest Patrol is not a great anti-spyware program