Ad-Aware: protect your secrets

November 2nd, 2007

How many of you are using an anti-spyware program? Did you notice that from time to time your computer will work slower? Have you ever wonder if your secrets are safe? Well, you may have big surprises if you run an anti-spyware program. Ad-Aware is the greatest anti-spyware that I’ll ever use. Even if I run a good Antivirus program on my computer, that contain also a anti-spy module (Kaspersky), when I run Ad-Aware I find a lot of little spy that hijack my little secrets.

Ad-Aware is a Lavasoft (a company that develop and deliver the highest quality of anti-spyware solutions and service to keep computers and networks around the globe secure from compromising and intrusive privacy threats) product and has a free license as well as a paid license (PLUS or PRO). You can find here a list with detailed information about every license. The free anti-spyware version provides advanced protection against spyware that secretly attaches and takes control of your computer, resulting in aggressive advertising pop-ups, sluggish computer activity, even identity theft through stolen bank details, passwords, and credit card account numbers. If you want real-time scanning capabilities, you can buy the PLUS license for real-time protection against spyware, all the time.

You will see that the last version of Ad-Aware has a beautiful design and it’s easy to use. When you open Ad-Aware, you will see first the Main Status, which provides information about some of your settings, about the previous scan, and the version of Definitions File (extensive library of identified and analyzed spyware). Even if the Automatic Update is set to On, for the free version you must use a manual Update in order to update the Definitions File. With the Pro and Plus versions you can set a personalized schedule for web updates.

In order to scan your computer, you may need to change your settings. You can perform manual scan as well as an auto-scan on Ad-Aware startup or on Windows startup.

I’ll not explain you now what every setting means, since you have a great help with text and images where you can find all you need to know.

In the free version you have also a Track Sweep. This tool erase the tracks left behind after you surf the Web, id est it can clean the cookies, the history, the cache and tabs. You just need to choose what browser you use, choose what do you want to clean and Track Sweep will do the rest.

You can perform a Smart Scan, a Full Scan or a Custom Scan. You can change the settings of these types of scans only on paid versions. On the free license, you can only choose what type of scan you want to perform. This is how a Full Scan looks:

The scan time depends on how many files and folders do you have on your computer. My computer is pretty full, so my scan time is about 10 minutes. Of course, in the mean while you can work on your computer, this scan didn’t bother you.
After the scan is complete, you will see all the freaky objects founded, with the descriptions. You can choose what you want to do: to add these objects on a ignore list or to remove them.

The Ignore List can be used when you want to keep a particular detected item installed on your system, and you don’t want Ad-Aware to remove it. When you add items to the Ignore List, Ad-Aware will not detect them when your system is scanned. The Ignore List lists types of objects together by category, and shows a description of each object’s location.

And Finished! Your secrets are now away from inquiring eyes.

Notes: You have noticed that my review is for the free license, because this is what I use. If you want a paid license you can read more about Ad-Aware Pro and Ad-Aware Plus.

Oh, I almost forget: if you want to try Ad-Aware for free, you can download it from here.

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Entry Filed under: Reviews