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Spyware Review - SpySweeper

Reviewed on June 10, 2004

About Webroot

A small company based in Boulder, Colorado. At the beginning of 2004, it had some 150,000 subscribers, the privately held Webroot is growing its customer base by 400% annually, according to CEO David Moll, who predicts that revenues will top $7 million this year.

About SpySweeper

SpySweeper was written by Steve Thomas, a reformed hacker and Webroot's founder. SpySweeper was released in the year 2003, its purpuse is to hunt down and eradicate any devious code. This year Webroot's flagship product has received numerous accolades, including the coveted PC Magazine's editors Choice 2004 for Spyware removal.

Anti-spyware tools are far more effective than all the other offerings in addressing this issue. Even David Sykes of Symantec (a leading antivirus vendor) agrees, "the specialist anti-spyware tools still work better at this stage. They work it as a niche area and keep their signatures more up to date than we can," he says. Due to its effectiveness, many people have been subscribing to Webroot's services.

Review, SpySweeper v2.6, Walkthrough

Tested on a Windows XP, Pentium 4, 256Megs Ram

Upon installing spysweeper, the first thing Spyware requests is to update it's spyware definitions file with the latest version which it downloads from webroot's website. In my case the definition file had over 24,000 known spyware programs catalogued.

Selecting the "Sweep Now" button, we initiate the scan for any spyware on our computer. Step One, a system wide sweep looking for Spyware (or any malicious, intrusive programs). Then checking memory (for resident applications), then the registry, and finally the file system. Took around 33 minutes to complete the system wide scan for spyware.

The majority of the programs found were cookies (a low threat assessment tracking tool), which makes up the bulk of the 104 files found.

StumbleUpon is not spyware. SpySweeper has apologized to StumblUpon.com for misdetecting them as spyware and fixed their program spysweeper. - 9 Nov 2005
One of the tagged programs was an internet explorer toolbar called "StumbleUpon". All by itself it had accounted for almost half the traces, about 1,700, in the registry.

All associated registry keys, files and dll's were removed.

Additionally there were certain programs termed as spyware which I wished to keep, Alexa toolbar bieng one of them. However locating all the other "low threat assessment" spyware programs was extremely time consuming, how I wished for a deselect all "low threat assessment" spyware programs. Maybe in the next release.

A Summary of the Spyware Sweep.

Spyware Options

Webroot is known to have one of the most current, uptodate spyware definitions table in the industry. The automatic updates (subscription required) was very easy to install and run.

You can setup Spysweeper for continuous monitoring of the Operating System. You can also tag spyware programs you would like to keep (i.e. Alexa toolbar) but it will still be included in the Spyware count, but the option to remove will not be available unless you update your prefrences again.

Spyware Score

Overall a very easy to use yet powerful spyware removal program. The functional equivalent of both SpyBot and Ad-aware programs combined. Highly effective with no false positives found. Only problem/concern was a lack of group selection options for selecting and de-selecting various spyware/adware programs at once given certain thresholds. Other than that minor complaint, a very stable, resource friendly application.

Rated: 9/10

References:
PC Mag's Spyware SpySweeper review, 2004 v2.20
PC Mag's Spyware SpySweeper review, 2003 v1.03
Fortune magazine - Spy vs Spy, May 12 2004
Australian IT - Stopping spies is a tough assignment

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