SpyBot S&D

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After recent posts in this forum on AdAware and A Bunch of Old Stuff, I decided to try this SpyBot thing to see what y’all were talking about. After a day ago running of AdAware, SpyBot came up with a list of 73 items! It seems like this program is designed as much to protect me from myself as from the spies out there! TWO of the elements it found were advertising cookies that I allowed it to delete. But the remaining 71 items were MRUs, log files and “usage tracks” that I ignored. Looks like one of those “detective” thingies that wants to help me prevent someone from seeing what I’ve been doing with my computer. I guess this is not a complaint, because if that’s his design, then so be it. But my question is this: do you users try to customize the thing so that it doesn’t look for all that stuff or do you just do what I did – ignore it all?

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Al,

If you select Settings on the left, and then Select File Set, you can check and uncheck the various things SpyBot will check for.

I’m not sure if these are sticky settings or not, though.

I just noticed that at the bottom of the “Main” screen, to the extreme right of the Check for problems button, there is one that says File Sets.

That is sort of a drop down, that you can select some file sets to use. It isn’t as comprehensive as the Settings|File Set method.

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http://www.net-integration.net/reviews/spybot1.html%5B/url%5D has screenshots of what should (etc) be marked. The Forum for Spybot is at http://www.net-integration.net[/url%5D

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Thanks, Lonnie – great links. I’m gonna have to go back later today and FULLY read every page of that review and the recommendations made.

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BigAl,

Yes, Spybot is designed to not only get rid of spyware, malware, keyloggers, dialers, some trojans, etc., etc., but also to remove most all traces of usage tracks from your HD. As others have already mentioned, you can go to the “Settings/Filesets” and check or uncheck what you want scanned. Also, you can go to “Excludes/****” and also choose Application MRU, cookies etc., you don’t want included in the Search results. Additionally, even after you run the “Check for Problems” scan… if there is anything in the results you would rather have excluded, you can right click on that item and choose “Exclude” from the context menu. Once you have used Spybot for a little while and got all the excludes, etc. configured the way you like them, if you go to “Settings/Settings” and scroll down to the very bottom under “Expert Settings” and check “Show expert buttons in results list” it will add a “Select All” button at the bottom of the window. That way you don’t have to manually check each item to have it removed. Makes it fast and simple after that. ENJOY! BTW, their support board is excellent.

Jeff

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Hi, Al ~

SpyBot is actually very comprehensive in its ability to do a variety of tasks and just the way you so choose. Pilgrim pretty much summed up what I was intending to post just great.

I would definitely make sure you select the “Online” tab in the lower left hand corner, then select “Update” button, then “Search for updates” and finally “Download updates” once they are shown and you have selected them.

One great feature I simply LOVE is the “Host file” in the same area. It loads up quite a few which blocks so many ads from all the major as well as lesser known ad servers and other garbage often hampering your page loads.

No one app being the fix-all, I have found that Ad-aware and SpyBot working hand-in-hand complimenting each other come pretty darn near!

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Thanks to you both, Jeff and Bruce, for your suggestions. I can see why several Loungers have said they use BOTH programs on a regular basis. I’m glad you mentioned the Hosts thing, Bruce. I don’t know much about that topic so I was kinda afraid to hit that box. Does it down ONE or several Hosts file(s) to your system? I do my own “selective” popup blocking with Mozilla so I don’t (necessarily) want to give up that control. If SpyBot download one Hosts file and puts in the Windows directory, I guess I could always “hide” it by renaming.

I’ve thought about the customizing thing for a couple of days and I’ve about decided to leave it alone and let it do its thing for awhile. After all, it only takes me a few seconds to scan and ignore the list of stuff it comes up with. It might be an interesting tutorial for me on an ongoing basis.

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Al ~

The hosts files it loads are about a thousand or so and encompasses more than just pop-ups, but also ads linked from within a page. Many ad servers have sequential-numbered addresses and this encompasses them all, for example, liveadvert.com, a huge ad server, has the URL addresses from 208.185.87.10 through 208.185.87.254. If you’ve ever added a popular one such as ad.doubleclick.com to your hosts file and wondered why they still appear, it is because, in so many words, it rolls over to the next working contiguous number in the DNS.

Add the updated hosts file, then go to PCWorld.com and you will notice about 4 or 5 spots on your page with “page not found” errors.

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I used Ad-Aware a couple of years ago and don’t remember much of its interface. But after trying SpyBot S&D, I realize it has some neat options A-A didn’t. I’ll still edit which programs are launched at startup via run>msconfig, and pgp also features file shredding, but it won’t hurt having these features twice. I run an “anti-ad” app once every while, and I think I’ll stick to SB S&D.

Last word: thanks for persuading me into trying it!

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Take a look at PestPatrol (http://pestpatrol.com/%5B/url%5D) as well, Big Al. I use it and like it, but I haven’t looked closely as SpyBot, since I have been happy with PestPatrol

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Bruce,

It’s funny, as much as I like and use Spybot, the “Hosts” file is the one feature which has caused me problems. It kills Norton “LiveUpdate”. I’ve tried deleting what was supposed to be the items that blocked the server, but no success. So, just out of curiosity, are you using Norton AV and scheduled LiveUpdate? If so and you aren’t having any problems with it BECAUSE you edited the Host file… I’d love to know what editing you did!!!

BTW, new updates for Spybot over the past couple of days too.

Jeff

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Hi, Jeff ~

I am not using NAV (don’t get me started ), but it doesn’t seem to make sense that NAV’s LiveUpdate would be included in the Hosts file.

It should not be a problem, nonetheless – there have been a few instances where I needed access to a page on a sever blocked by the Hosts file and simply removing it does the trick. If you are not having success, either you are not removing all the applicable addresses or perhaps the Hosts file may not be the culprit. I have almost 2000 entries in there and it has been a godsend, really, and editing where rarely necessary has stemmed any problems.

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Bruce,

There is no question that the Hosts file is the culprit! At the beginning of the long list, at least the last time I loaded it, there were two entries for Norton AV which when removed made no difference. I was told that Norton, along with many reputable companies use one of the more common less reputable servers to transfer their files over. The problem is that, as you know, there are hundreds of entries in the list which makes it practically impossible to find the one or more other entries that would cause the block. Oh well, I had hoped that perhaps you knew what the others might have been. Keeping my AV definitions current is far more important than having an active Hosts file, especially since I don’t “browse around”!

Jeff

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Jeff ~

Sorry I couldn’t help more. Would it be possible to get the address from the HTML update page or from Norton tech support to get the correct respective address?

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