Spy Sweeper Review

Webroot Software's Spy Sweeper 4.0 might be the most effective standalone tool for detecting, removing, and blocking spyware. Although the program didn't perform perfectly in our testing, it was successful in inhibiting most spyware and was one of only three products that were able to scan a system successfully with the key logger SpyAgent installed.

Spy Sweeper's Active Shields feature aims to protect you while you're surfing and warns you when your system loads spyware into memory, when your browser home page is changed, or (if you desire) when a site places tracking cookies on your system. The memory scanner detected most spyware as the apps were attempting to install. Non intrusive and effective in all of our standard tests.

Additionaly Spy Sweeper provided particularly informative descriptions of the programs and the option to scan the system now, scan later, or ignore a spyware app entirely. In a few cases, however, the pop-up window intended to warn us away from a program was hidden behind the installation window until after installation was complete. Spy Sweeper also didn't warn us when we installed CommonName, though it did identify that app during a later scan (Update: Fixed as of version 4.0). Whenever a site or application tried to reset our Internet Explorer home page, a Spy Sweeper dialog popped up to ask if we approved of the change.

We like Spy Sweeper's scanning capabilities. They're thorough and relatively fast, and the results are organized into a convenient hierarchy so you can see at a glance what spyware was detected without having to wade through every Registry key, file, or cookie that the scanner detected (though this information is available should you desire it).

One small thing that honestly irritates me about Spy Sweeper: You can't resize Spy Sweeper's fixed-size window, which shows only a few lines of information at a time. This can be irritating when you're working with a badly infected machine.

Although scanning itself took just a minute or two, on some of our heavily infected test-beds Spy Sweeper took half an hour or more to quarantine the installed spyware. And while it succeeded in eliminating most of the undesirable software on our systems, we were unable to eliminate a handful of products, which managed to use ticklers to revive themselves after each reboot.

Webroot also makes a free version of Spy Sweeper, without the live-update capabilities so you can check it out. Spy Sweeper's combination of ease of use, reasonable price, and above-average blocking and removal capabilities makes it an excellent choice for users who want a standalone application.

For more information visit Spy Sweeper's Homepage.