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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An Active X control has to be downloaded prior to the scan. A health report is generated in the end that is displaying red, yellow and green icons in various categories. Red items are critical, yellow medium and green safe. My test results have been mixed. I did receive several red icons in some categories because of programs that were not included in my security concept. The red icon in the security products category for instance was there because of the disabled Windows Firewall and no other firewall that was installed.

It did not detect the hardware firewall of my router. What I want to say is that even though some elements are marked as insecure they might not be in your special case. Another example was the yellow icon in the Sending Mail category which was there because of an old backup version of Eudora 5 which I do not use anymore. I think I did receive a yellow rating because of two up-to-date email applications (Thunderbird and Outlook Express).

The most interesting categories in my opinion are the following two: Opening multimedia files and documents & Using other programs. It did detect some outdated applications (that I do not use regularly or forgot about). What I really like is the option to solve the issue right away by clicking on the solve button. This normally leads to a page where the updated application or patch can be downloaded.

It does not take long to update all the applications listed this way. F-Secure Health Check is an interesting service that excels in solving issues that have been found. A pity that it only works in Internet Explorer and that it requires Active X.

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