Ad-Aware
Posted on: 08/09/2004 11:00 PM

Lavasoft was established in Germany in 1990 and incorporated in 2002. They are an industry leader and respected provider of anti-trackware solutions. They are famous for their free spyware removal tool, Ad-Aware, which originally was released in 1999. While the software has been updated frequently with new spyware definitions, the program itself has gone without an update for a long time and was becoming a bit dated. Lavasoft has released a new version of Ad-Aware, now called Ad-Aware SE in Personal, Plus and Professional version. These range in price from free to $39.95.

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Ad-Aware detects previous installations and offers to uninstall them for you and follows up with a fresh install with only a few clicks needed from the user. Ad-Aware SE then offers to update your definition file, show you the newly revamped help file and launch the program, where it automatically does the first scan for you. Ad-Aware does a brilliant job of retaining the same look and feel of the Ad-Aware you are familiar with, but does so with a completely rewritten engine, updated buttons, icons and the use of fonts. The layout is also updated allowing you to break down your scan results into scan summary, critical objects, negligible objects or scan log. The options section is neatly laid out, exactly like the main interface page, and allows you to customize the program to your needs. The Add-ons section allows you to access plug-ins as well as get statistics on spyware that may have been on your system. The program still lacks a "check all" or "remove all" button. Instead, you still have to right click on any found spyware item and choose "select all". Of course, one reason for this is that you may not want to remove all items, for example cookies to your favorite websites which are in many cases not spyware. Likewise, the top of the program has updated buttons allowing you to access Ad-Watch, Configuration, Quarantine manager, WebUpdate Tool and the About Ad-Aware SE. Oddly, these buttons are quite large, yet you have to mouse over them to see what they do. There is plenty of room for some text in there, so I would prefer some of that space was used for text.

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So, we have an updated, pretty interface, revamped engine and lot of new features and options, but does it work? Well, in order to find out, I browsed some porn and crack sites at random, just following links and downloading for 4 hours. Yes, I have now seen it all and am ashamed of myself, but I did it for you. Within 5 minutes, Ad-Watch had blocked 60 events. While a lot of these were tracking cookies, it blocked some of the most well known parasites out there including programs attempting to edit the registry and load into memory. At the same time, it was unable to stop the installation of some toolbars and a home page hijack from Slotch. A complete scan, however, did find and remove this, a total of 61 items from browsing about 8 porn websites. All items were gone from the AddRemove programs list, my browser was easily reverted back to my default home page and the toolbar was completely removed. Ad-Aware SE knows to close your browser, if open, to remove most items. Ad-Aware SE now appears to be scanning deeper than ever by default. While it takes twice as long to scan than before, you should note it is scanning twice as much by default. What it scanned before, it now scans better. It also adds in new scans including: scanning all modules loaded by a process, extra protection against DLL injection, a new code sequence identification (all that before we even begin to cover the extended registry and disk scanning), lots of new tweak options, process monitoring and Ad-Watch. Ad-Watch is the biggest improvement to date, blocking more items than ever before and keeping a log to show you what it has blocked and why. After 4 hours of porn and other things one should not be downloading, Ad-Aware SE had either stopped, or removed with a scan, any parasites picked up along the way. Ad-Aware SE also offers Process Watch showing you what is running on your machine and their dependencies. This could be a handy tool for finding trojans and their related DLL files; something that seems to be more frequent lately.

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Ad-Aware SE retains its crown as one, if not the best, spyware removal utilities available today.
While I would like to see a few more changes in the main interface to make using and removing a bit more simple, the free version is a Godsend for those who want to just do routine scans. The extra protection you can get from Ad-Watch in the retail Plus or Professional versions are well worth the current price of $26.95, compared to many less capable, Johnny-come-lately spyware programs that charge more than this. Sadly, I can not cover all of Ad-Aware SE's many features in this short review. If you have used Ad-Aware in the past and stopped, try it again. If you are a current user, update it. Either way, expect to be impressed.

(5/5) Stars

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