Virustotal is a great online service that provides access to more than 30 antivirus engines that can scan a file uploaded by the user. This gives the user a much deeper understanding if a file is malicious or not. Hitman Pro is a similar application with the difference that it is a local software program that makes use of various anti-spyware programs which it downloads automatically to scan a computer.
Hitman Pro is making use of eight spyware scanning engines. It’s a mixture of free and trial versions. Among the software programs are popular spyware cleaners like Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-aware and Webroot Spysweeper. Each application can be selected to be included in the system scan or excluded from it. Besides those eight engines can include the commercial antivirus applications TrendMicro Sysclean and McAfee Virusscan if the user has a license for those applications.
The options contain several additional interesting features that require some explanation. The user can select to use the Browser security plugins that is offered by some of the anti-spyware applications, install security updates and configure least user access levels for his web browser.
The first run takes a bit longer than the future ones because all selected applications will be downloaded from the Internet. Hitman Pro is installing the automatically on the user system with minimal to no user input required. Once the applications have been downloaded the system scan begins. Each application is run after the other and the results are visible in the application itself and in Hitman Pro at the end.
This process can slow down the computer quite a bit and it is probably a good idea to let the scans run automatically and do something different in the meantime. One aspect that is not optimal is the fact that most of these anti-spyware tools run a permanent process even if the main application is not running.
This can create quite some noise in the background and experienced users might prefer to install and uninstall the applications manually instead. The idea itself is great however and it would have been really nice if Hitman would be able to use the scanning engines and definitions without having to install the software programs itself. That’s probably wishful thinking though.
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If it installs services, yuck. If it doesn’t, it’s still downloading a crapload of junk to scan.
Superantispyware FREE edition is the way to be, imo.
Who tf needs 8 (in words eight!) antispyware tools at the same time? And every app runs its own service…
Thats crazy, dont you think so?
Yeah, it’s definitely redundant to the point of being kinda ridiculous.
Also, nothing is more annoying than an unnecessary resident service. That alone is enough reason to skip it.
How it’s done is sort of neat and damn sure resourceful (using free or trial apps). It just sounds really impractical and doesn’t ensure decent protection to headache ratio.
For the newbie who’s absolutely clueless, why not? Not like another lower right icon is going to bug them too much. It would probably find most if not all spyware possible. Grannie would be pleased! It’s just the lifesucking services (and imo) overly redundant approach, it’s hard to endorse such bloat. You can run it automatically while at work though…
would running this sandboxed make it easier to remove all apps at once after scanning?