Spyware Doctor

The Spyware Doctor, from PC Tools, has been rated as a PC User Top Buy, has 5 Cows from Tucows, 5 Stars from Download.com and was featured in the top 100 products of 2006 in Computer Shopper Magazine. Every web surfer knows that a visit to the internet can result in their system being infected with malware such as spyware and viruses. Even legitimate downloads can become laced with nasty surprises, and some useful packages can be used to transmit spyware. The risk is that the nasties that are downloaded can do real damage to a computer system. Sometimes, all that they do is slow down the computer as it has to run many applications at the same time. Other times they could reformat the hard drive without the user knowing. In short they have to be removed. Traditionally, however, this has required access to a big database and frequent downloads of new virus signatures and cleaning solutions. In the past this ate up disk space and used valuable internet download capacity. More recent systems use heuristics to detect malware in an intelligent fashion. The Spyware Doctor uses signatures and heuristics together to detect malware that is not (yet) in it's, or any other database. By concentrating on Spyware, and not trying to cover all types of malware, the Spyware Doctor can do that one thing to perfection. It is always resident, always scanning. Surprisingly, it uses very little processing power to keep up to date with your system. The software has been designed from the ground up to detect rootkits and other items that hide themselves, which is why it has to run permanently in the background. Having said that, the software manufacturer does boast that a full system scan is now faster than ever before. If ever a full scan is needed, it can be done in the background, or during a coffee break. The Main Spyware Doctor Interface During a scanning run, usual features are present: Pause and Resume scan Black/white lists Quarantine Cookie Blocking External drive switching This means that a single scan can be done across multiple drives, with all items correctly quarantined. The Black and White lists ensure that only potentially dangerous items are scanned. Of course, the Spyware Doctor also has an automatic, smart update, complete with anti-spyware so even if you do manage to download some malware, it is unlikely to do any harm before the Doctor removes it.