Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The problem with anti spyware software and what you can do to protect yourself...

I hate anti spyware software . I hate them more than you do, and I always have.

If you give me a few seconds I will tell you why.

But first, let's start with how I got here, and why I'm writing this...

It must have been about three weeks ago now, I was browsing the web when I got this nasty spyware on my computer. All I was doing was simply surfing the internet, I didn’t even download anything.

Now I’m no computer dummy. I’ve been surfing the net since 1993 when the first real browser, Mosaic, was unleashed.

When the neighbor has a computer problem they ask me to fix it.

Even though my friends all consider me a computer expert the one thing I really dread is spyware.

The problem with anti spyware software is companies sell software that at best only removes 90% of your spyware.

The only way to remove spyware is to buy anti spyware software to get rid of 60-90% of your spyware and then buy another anti spyware software to remove the last of it. Hopefully together they will remove all the spyware, but unfortunately most of the time they don’t.

So you’re stuck shelling out $60 for two pieces of software that still haven’t solved your problem. That’s why I hate anti spyware software. Most of them are a rip off.

Even worse are the software programs that give false positives. What is a false positive? It’s when an anti spyware program scans your computer and says you have spyware when in fact you don’t.

Many companies have been sued by the Federal Trade Commission and received multi million dollar fines for misleading consumers. Just back in January the FTC settled a $2 million fine against a company for misleading consumers into thinking they have spyware on their computer when they didn’t. That person was even banned from ever selling an anti spyware product for the rest of his life.

So there are a lot of scams to be found both in spyware and the tools to remove it.

After wasting several hours looking for the solution to remove the spyware that was slowing down my computer and causing popups all over my computer screen I found a post in a forum about SpyZooka.

I thought it would be just another scam but I checked it out anyway. I went to their website and started reading about it.

SpyZooka guarantees 100% spyware removal in less than 24 hours is what first stuck out to me. After all I just spent several hours researching my problem and I couldn’t find any other company that makes this guarantee. I still wasn’t sure about the program so I kept reading…

SpyZooka won the Tucows 5 cows award. Immediately I realized this must be a credible program because out of the hundreds of anti spyware programs for sale only about 10 or so have won this prestigious award.

If you’ve never heard of Tucows before they are an independent software rating company with millions of visitors to their website. They are to software what the Oscars are to movies. Or the Grammy’s are to musicians.

Then I read SpyZooka collects its database of spyware from a robot. Which was even more exciting because in my extensive research there are only 3 other companies that employ a robot to collect definitions for them.

What the robot does is surf the internet 24/7 downloading spyware and analyzing it to be added to the database. Spyware has to be in the database in order for SpyZooka to know it’s spyware and remove it.

The robot is much more efficient and error free in it’s calculations. This means a much larger database of known spyware.

After finding out SpyZooka has won over 50 five star awards from other independent software review sites I decided to buy it. I thought maybe it would cost more than some of the other software programs but it doesn’t.

I downloaded SpyZooka on my pc after buying it, entered my license code, ran a scan and removed the spyware found. This was easy enough and the whole process only took about five minutes.

What was interesting to me was that SpyZooka picked up on a spyware program and a Trojan horse that the other anti spyware programs I tested didn’t catch. First I thought maybe it was a false positive but after investigating it I found it really was on my pc.

Trojan horses are especially bad because they can get on your computer and steal things like passwords. So when you login to your bank account the trojan horse can collect you username and password and send it to whoever created the Trojan horse so they can steal your bank account details. Trojan horses account for a large part of identity theft.

Unfortunately I went back on the internet and my connection was still slow and I kept getting these annoying popups even when my computer wasn’t connected to the internet.

This is the place where I’d be in trouble with any other anti spyware software. I have to admit I was disappointed that SpyZooka didn’t remove the spyware that I bought it to remove on the first scan even though it did pick upon those 2 spyware programs the others missed.

I wasn’t sure what to expect next.

I followed the simple directions SpyZooka sent me in the welcome email after I first bought it. I simply clicked the “Scan Report” tab in SpyZooka, entered my email address and clicked “Upload Report.” A few seconds later I got a message stating my report was uploaded.

Then I simply waited. Here is what happened:

10:16 A.M. I sent the report to SpyZooka.

10:17 A.M. I received an email reply stating that it was received.

11:39 A.M. I received what looked like a personal reply from SpyZooka customer support stating they are researching my report.

2:01 P.M. I received an email stating my spyware problem was identified and new definitions were uploaded for me to download.

(I didn’t check my email and see that email from SpyZooka until 4:30 PM that day…)

4:30 PM I saw the email from SpyZooka and followed their directions. Here is what I did:

1. I opened SpyZooka.

2. I clicked the link at the top of SpyZooka (AutoUpdate) to download my new definitions.

3. I ran a scan with SpyZooka.

4. I clicked the button to remove the infections that SpyZooka found. That was it!

Ok, so now I’m wondering if this whole process was a waste of time or not. So I go back on the internet to see what happens.

My internet connection was faster and all my popups were gone. So in just a little over 6 hours total from the time I first sent my spyware report until the time I saw the email from SpyZooka and followed the simple 4 step process my computer was spyware free.

I figured before I started this process it would be easy for me since I’m an advanced computer user, but could be daunting for the average home user. I found this untrue as it was extremely easy to go through the short process.

SpyZooka has obviously spent a lot of time and money perfecting this process to make it so simple even for the average (or less than average) computer user.
What I like is now my computer is covered by this 100% removal guarantee for one whole year from the day I purchased it. And in the future I can renew my license for only $14.95 per year.

SpyZooka has exclusive SpyGuard technology which prevents infections from getting on your pc to begin with. So hopefully after buying SpyZooka you will never have another spyware problem on your pc again.

Now I was satisfied that I finally found an anti spyware product that I could recommend to my friends and neighbors when they ask me what anti spyware software to run.

I hope SpyZooka will make your internet surfing and computer usage a more pleasurable and safe experience as it’s doing for me.

Click Here to find out more about SpyZooka

Steven Miller