Spybot Search and Destroy Mission: Search and Destroy Malware Forrest Stroud
Mission: Search and Destroy Malware
This brings us to Spybot Search and Destroy, or Spybot-S&D for short, a must-have utility for detecting and protecting yourself against nearly every imaginable form of malware, including adware and spyware threats, keyloggers, trojan horses, and duplicitous dialers.
Spybot-S&D delivers premium power to go along with an extensive feature-set and a dual mode, easy to use interface. Best of all, the client is available as donationware, meaning you can download and continue using Spybot-S&D for free until a guilty conscience catches up with you.
Spybot-S&D's quick setup wizard gets you up and running and ready for an initial scan of your system. The client offers users a choice of sticking with a basic default mode that hides many of the more advanced settings and features, or an advanced mode that makes all of the program's settings and options accessible. With either mode comes the assorted obligatory anti-spyware warnings — some commands can create irreversible changes to your computer, including rendering some adware- or spyware-infected applications unusable.
We recommend starting off with the default mode, as it places the program's key functions front and center, with quick access to a complete system scan, a spyware recovery tool, and a bit of preventative medicine in the form of spyware immunization. It's easy to switch between modes, and your desktop and quick launch icons can be configured to launch the client in the mode of your choice.
A complete scan of our test system for just under 14,000 potential malware objects was performed by Spybot-S&D in less than four minutes, and removal of the forty-six detected problems (primarily adware cookies in this case) was completed in a matter of seconds.
