Microsoft AntiSpyware 1.7

Microsoft announced the acquisition of an anti-spyware company, surprising many in the industry. The acquisition is notable for two reasons. First, Microsoft had already revealed its intention to get into the anti-spyware market. Second, the company it purchased, Giant Company Software, was largely an unknown in the industry. But in a rare moment of luck, I'd actually been a fan, customer, and advocate of Giant AntiSpyware, as their anti-spyware solution is logically named, for several months. In fact, I've found it to be far more effective than the industry darlings, Ad-aware and Spybot Search & Destroy. And I've been recommending it to friends and family ever since.But wait, the luck doesn't end there. While my experience using Giant Antispyware gives me a unique perspective of this product, I was also lucky enough to interview Giant co-founder Andrew Newman just days before his company was purchased by Microsoft. Newman discussed with me Giant's plans for future versions of the product, including a centrally-managed enterprise version (Figure) that, I suspect, played a large part in Microsoft's interest. Newman explained to me why Giant's approach to tackling spyware is superior to that of the competition, and provided some valuable insight into how spyware can be confronted and defeated.

Protect yourself in real-time against pernicious programs that change your Internet settings and exploit your private information. AntiSpyware detects spyware programs, tells you where they're located, gives you a risk rating, and recommends what action you should take. You can then disable the program or permanently remove it. If you inadvertently remove any programs you later want, you can get them back.Goto Microsoft's site, where you are asked to validate that your Windows installation is genuine. Please note that although the program did work on our test machines, it is beta software, so we recommend you use it with caution (i.e. you may not want to install it on your primary machine)

Like Giant AntiSpyware before it, Windows AntiSpyware is an excellent product and is inarguably the finest anti-spyware product made available thus far. Given its price (free) and its excellent functionality, Windows XP SP2 users would be crazy not to install this product, even in beta form, and leaving it monitoring their systems. However, as many spyware experts have noted, no one anti-spyware product catches all malware and spyware. For this reason, I also recommend that you download and manually run another anti-spyware product regularly. The best non-Microsoft solution is Webroot Spy Sweeper, which I use and recommend, but if you'd rather not pay for protection, the free version of Lavasoft Ad-aware is decent but not excellent. Between Windows AntiSpyware beta and one of these products, you should see a marked decrease in spyware on your systems. The best way to avoid spyware, of course, is to use a safer Web browser. On that note, we strongly recommend Mozilla Firefox over Internet Explorer.