| PC Reviews:
Spy Cleaner Gold | |
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Spy Cleaner Gold Screenshots |
| The Final Say! |
Spy
Cleaner Gold
- reviewed by Andrew B
Review Date: November 2004
Review Score: 9.5/10
Distributor:
Manaccom |
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"The best possible protection!"
Once upon a time, the internet was a peaceful place that was inhibited by a
variety of pleasant folk who not only helped each other with various
computer issues but also shared information. Unfortunately for 99.9% of
internet users, those days are long gone and what was once a place of shared
information is now full of various cyber-dangers such as viruses, Trojan
horses, insidious cyber people and now the latest menace... SPYWARE!
Fortunately our friends at Manaccom Australia have come to rescue of all
internet users and have released a program called Spy Cleaner Gold that not
only protects us all from the dangerous of spyware and various intrusion
miners
but also unauthorised web installations, adware and probably the most
dangerous offspring of spyware, hijacker intrusions.
You might be asking what exactly is spyware? or what are hijacker
intrusions? The simplest answer is that these are programs written by people
to either intrude your computer or target you for advertising. Either way,
these programs or scripts are extremely illegal and have violated your
computer without your permission, and that my dear readers is where Spy
Cleaner Gold comes into action.
The installation of Spy Cleaner Gold was a breeze and simply auto-installed
when the CD was inserted into the CD-ROM drive. Once the program was
installed, it greeted this reviewer with an extremely user-friendly
interface that allowed us to perform a variety of actions that included
system scan, backup/restore, exclusion list, options, utilities, help, about
and exit. |
Features
* Spy Watcher – real-time anti-spyware monitor
* Backup capability
* Archive content viewer and manager
* Restores files from IE Hijacker
* Blocks ActiveX and Web installations
* 28,000 spyware signatures recognised
* Active Update on the Internet.
Once the program was installed, I automatically started a full system scan
of my computer which found a variety of spyware intrusions that was not
discovered by the shareware version of adware which is an extremely
impressive program but unfortunately comes nowhere close to Spy Cleaner
Gold.
After Spy Cleaner Gold performed a full system scan, it displayed an in-depth
report of all the spyware anomalies it discovered on the hard drive. Some of
the spyware that was discovered by this software package included various data-miner
tracking cookies and also a potential hijacker web browser threat. With a
simple click of the mouse, all
the spyware and malicious ActiveX and hijacker intrusions were totally removed from my computer system.
Another impressive feature of this software bundle is that Spy Cleaner Gold
comes with a backup/restore option that lets you create backups of removed
"spyware" items that may be integral to other software programs that are
already installed on your computer. For instance, some programs that you
download from the internet may contain "non-harmful" spyware (e.g. the
unregistered version of Opera browser contains spyware that displays
advertising in the browser), so the backup/restore feature of the program ensures that after a
full system scan if a program doesn't work, then you can easily
restore the previous settings.
It also should be noted that <ALL> spy cleaners come with this option, this not
only protects the user but also other legitimate programs that may use a
certain type of spyware like red-sheriff (counter program) or adware for
unregistered programs. These legitimate programs also informs the user that
they will installing certain spyware programs on your computer in the user
agreement form that many users fail to read. Either way, I am not a fan of
spyware, whether legitimate or illegitimate Spy Cleaner Gold helps keep my
system free of this nuisance.
Cleans
Ad-ware, AdvertBar, Alexa, Aureate, BDE Projector, CashBar, Comet Cursor,
CommonName, Cydoor, DoubleClick, EverAd, eZula, ExpedioWare, EWA, Flyswat,
Gator, HotBar, Lop, NetPal, OnFlow, Surf+, TimeSink, TopMoxie, Transponder,
Web3000, WebHancer, ZapSpot...and many more.
Spy Cleaner Gold also comes with a real-time spy monitor that basically runs
in the background of your computer processes and when you visit a web site, it
automatically checks the content of the site that you are visiting for any
unauthorised intrusions and stops them before they can be installed on your
system. This monitor can be turned on or off but I would recommend
it be enabled all the time to ensure the best possible protection.
Spy Cleaner Gold boasts over 28,000 spyware signatures and it also
comes with a automatic live active update program that is built into the software
which allows you to
automatically update the program when new updates are released. Perfect to
ensure that the user is protected from all latest threats. If you are a
frequent internet user that visits a plethora of web site than I would
highly recommend this program to you because this program is as safe as it
gets!
-
Andrew B
Copyright ©2004 www.impulsegamer.com
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