The focus of Double Anti-Spy Professional is a complete spyware protection of computer systems running the Microsoft Windows operating system which includes protection against spyware and adware but also against other forms of malware including backdoors, computer bots and trojans.

The installation of the anti-spyware software and the interface of the program have been designed with ease of use in mind. The program will always start up with the status report window which will display relevant information like the date and time of the last scan, the freshness of the definition files or the results of the last scan. The four buttons on the left side are used to switch between sections of the software.

Double Anti-Spy Professional can perform three types of scans: A quick scan that will only scan important locations, a full scan to scan all files and locations and a custom scan that the user can define individually. A full system scan is recommended after installation and updating the definitions to find all traces of spyware that might be located on the computer system.

The anti-spyware software protects the computer system from spyware that tries to attack the PC. It does so by actively monitoring the system for suspicious files. The depth and level of protection can be configured in the Active Defense section of the program.

Here it is possible to configure the active defense and email defense settings to block and quarantine files and software before it can become a threat. Email defense works with several popular desktop email clients including Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird.

The very same menu can also be used to schedule scans and add programs and files to a whitelist or blacklist.

The fourth and final tab Settings can be used to configure the different scans that Double Anti-Spy Professional can perform, set the update check interval, configure a proxy server and scan optimizer or disable Windows Explorer automatically if it is running on the system to avoid compatibility problems.

Now, how good is the anti-spyware software? Avanquest show test results conducted by AV-Test on their homepage which tested Double Anti-Spyware Pro against PC Tools Spyware Doctor and Webroot Spy Sweeper. Other tests have not been published yet and it is not even possible to find the AV-Test results anywhere on the Internet. But what about the two engines that the security software is using? According to users on some web forums the program is using the engines of Outpost AntiSpyware + VIPRE (CounterSpy) which both did receive good reviews and recommendations.

Update: The software is using the following engines: Double Anti-Spy includes Sunbelt’s VIPRE (Engine A) + Outpost AntiSpyware combined with Virus Buster SDK (Engine B)

Verdict:

Double Anti-Spy Professional utilizes two scanning engines from respected companies to protect the computer against spyware which makes it more effective. Resource usage was a bit high on a Windows 7 test system if the window of the program was active (about 80 Megabytes). The program itself is compatible with Windows XP and 32-bit or 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. More information are available at the Double Anti-Spy Professional homepage.

Giveaway:

We have ten download copies and licenses for Double Anti-Spy Professional. Just leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy. Every comment in the next 24 hours will take part in the draw and the winners will be emailed. The email will contain the download link, license key and instructions.

This article will concentrate on two lesser known free spyware removal tools. The first program is called Roguefix. It has been designed to counter so called rogue applications. The tool has been specifically designed to remove rogue scanners, desktop and homepage hijackers, trojans, codecs and miscellaneous malware.

Roguefix comes as a simple batch file that has to be executed in Windows safe mode.

The tool will then scan the operating system for spyware and remove detected spyware automatically from the computer system. The free spyware cleaner is only compatible to the Windows XP operating system according to the software developer.

SmitfraudFix on the other hand can scan a Windows XP or Windows 2000 operating system directly. The user needs to boot into safe mode for the removal process though. The program will generate a report after the scan which will list all the malicious files found after the spyware scan.

Both tools have been designed to detect and remove rogue applications only which does limit their usefulness in day to day spyware scans. It is however a good idea to have them at hand in case the computer system gets infected by rogue spyware.

Update: Roguefix has been discontinued, the developer site is no longer available.

Windows Defender comes with the usual options to automatically update the program and schedule regular system scans to protect the computer system. Default actions for low, medium and high alerts can be defined that will be executed by the anti-spyware program automatically.

Microsoft’s anti-spyware solution comes with the interesting advanced tool Software Explorer which can display extensive information about startup programs, currently running programs, network connected programs and Winsock service providers.

Each program and provider is sorted by company which makes it easier to find non-Microsoft programs that are running or connected to the computer system.

Microsoft has improved Windows Defender over the years. The company did receive lots of criticism in the beginning which can be attributed to a low spyware detection rate. Several anti-spyware products have performed better in tests, outlined here or here. Please note that the tests linked in this article have been performed about 10 months ago and that the situation may have changed in the mean time.

Which leads to the question: Are you running anti-spyware software? If so which?

Malewarebytes Anti-Malware is a software currently in Beta that has an easy to use interface. Users can either quick scan their computer which scans only the hard drive of the operating system and Registry or fully scan their system with the choice of selecting the hard drives that should be scanned.

The quick scan finished on my main Windows XP partition in under 3 minutes while the full scan of all of my hard drives took completed in roughly 30 minutes. Neither scan did find any malware on my computer and I personally find it hard to judge the effectiveness of Anti-Malware.

The main disadvantage of Anti-Malware is in my opinion the non-existent realtime protection which is only available in the Pro version. This is a major drawback and makes the product inferior to other free anti-spyware applications.

It still seems to be pretty useful if you want to scan a system quickly considering that it uses less resources during the scan. CPU in the task manager for instance never went up above 20% while Spybot for instance was always using 65%+.

The beta version of Malewarebytes Anti-Malware is only available in the forums of the homepage with new versions being released every 2-3 days.

Spyware Terminator assists you in setting up the software after installation by providing a setup assistant. You setup automatic updates, the protection level which offers a choice between beginner, advanced, expert and no protection, the integration of the free antivirus software ClamAV and finally whether you would like to send spyware information to a central server. Last but not least you can schedule scans and perform a fast system scan.

The fast scan found several critical objects which are automatically rated as Threats, Safe SW and Unknown SW. The threats are obviously the most critical objects that you should deal with before you take a look at the two other categories. Most threats get an automatic ranking from one to five with five being the most critical threat of course.

You may select some or all threats and either move them to quarantine or delete / uninstall them right away. The spyware removal itself is recommending to use the uninstallation routine (if existent) for the spyware that you want to remove. It should be obvious that many spywares do not offer uninstallation routines and it was not a problem for Spyware Terminator to remove all of the threats in that category.

It could be tricky to receive additional information about the objects listed in Spyware Terminator. There is no obvious way to find out more about “Nwiz” from within the program which means that you have to perform a search on the Internet to be sure why this is considered safe for instance. There is however a way to contact the support team which apparently helps if you have troubles identifying a certain object.

Another way would be to use the forum at the official website which has a own subforum that deals with questions and problems that occur when removing Threats.

The fast scan did not scan all files on my system and I decided to take a look at the available scan options to perform a full scan of my system. Next to the fast scan you can perform a full scan and a custom scan, both offering several options to optimize the scan. The Full Spyware Scan gives you the option to perform a system scan, a registry scan, a files scan or a deep files scan while the custom scan lets you choose a drive that should be scanned.

Let us take a look at the real time protection which is one of the main features of the free spyware program. The protection is divided into three different areas, namely Application Guard, System Guard and Internet Guard. All three guards can protect several different elements of your system. The System Guard for instance may protect your hosts file which is often used by spyware and phishers to redirect you to fake websites.

The Internet Guard protects your system against Toolbars and Browser Helper Objects among other things which is indeed very useful if you surf the web with the Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Spyware Terminator is a nice program that is in my opinion at least on the same level as Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware. Ad-Aware for instance does not offer realtime protection in the free personal version which is a big plus of Spyware Terminator.

Most inexperienced users should activate the realtime protection feature making it much safer for them to use their computer on the Internet. I honestly never heard of this software before but I can only say that I will recommend it from now on.

The question that I’m asking myself is if you really need the Windows Defender if you have been using programs like ad-aware or spybot before and I think the answer is pretty obvious: No, Windows Defender is not needed. It might be fine for users who do not know and care about spyware and could help those users protect their computers in a more secure way from spyware and spam but everyone else should really stay with the program that they have been using before.

This is backed up by some tests, for instance by Suzi Turner from Zdnet, who used a virtual spyware infected system and tested the efficiency of Windows Defender. She came to the conclusion that Windows Defender was only able to detect 65% to 75% of the Spyware that was installed on the system compared to the commercial programs Spyware Doctor and Spyware Sweeper.

I personally think that Windows Defender is just another program that does not excel in what it should do. The same can be said for other softwares from Microsoft like the Windows Firewall for instance. I would advise everyone to either use other freely available tools to scan and protect your pc from spyware and spam or buy a commercial product that lives up to its promises. It is furthermore a good idea to test your system from time to time with a tool like Hijack This just to make sure nothing bypassed your anti-spyware program.