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Best Free Adware-Spyware-Scumware Remover
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Introduction
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The internet is a dangerous place to be in the 21st century, with many people using increasingly ingenious ways to part you with your hard earned cash, whether it be by exploitation, surreptitiously harvesting your credit card and bank details for their own nefarious purposes, or tempting you to spend money on products and services that you neither need nor want. During the latter years of the 20th century, and the early years of the 21st, Spybot S&D and AdAware were kings, protecting you from all manner of malware that tried to infect your computer with the sole intention of parting you from your wallet. But as technology improves, so do the malware writers, and the kings of yesterday in terms of protection may no longer be up to the job. With every new generation of malware, there will be a new generation of software to combat it, and in my own tests, these are the best free products I recommend. |
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Discussion
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Top of the list is Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free (MBAM). MBAM is a top notch and reputable product. A fairly lightweight download (just over 10 MB) and simple installation means this is not a burdensome product. In my testing, even when the PC was severely infected with many nasties running, it started without any problem and scanned and removed those nasties effectively. The interface is very simple, the scans are very fast and detection is first class. A reboot to complete cleaning was still required for some malware, though this is a minor inconvenience, and required by most programs of this type. The only downside is it has no portable version, and if there is no working network connection in the infected PC you won't be able to download the latest virus definition updates. Second is SUPERAntiSpyware (SAS). Once upon a time this was a good product but recent releases have not been up to the mark. The interface is simple, updates are speedy but it still installs a start-up item which doesn't actually do anything at all. The scan speed is twice to thrice that of MBAM and the detection is less than half of it. The removal also left a lot to be desired. It left a few nasties running even when it showed them as removed. SAS also requires a reboot to complete the removal process. The upside is, it has a portable version which will help with the removal of infections from computers without a working network connection. I hope version 5 brings improvements. ~~~~~ Below is the old review which is still going to be updated ~~~~~
Top of the list once again is SuperAntiSpyware, which successfully detected and cleaned 121 threats on my test system. A fairly lightweight download and simple installation (5.99 MB) mean that this is not a burdensome product. If anything the general package whilst aesthetically similar, has improved, managing to detect and clean after a single scan rather than the two scans required previously. A reboot to complete cleaning was still required, though this is a minor inconvenience, and required by most packages. If I had to raise a criticism, it's that the freeware version still installs a start-up item which doesn't actually do anything at all. In the paid version, it loads the always on protection which is not available in the freeware version. This minor annoyance aside, it remains my top recommendation.
Promoted this time to joint second place is Emsisoft Anti Malware free edition, and let me be very clear that it is ONLY the free edition that I am able to recommend. Emsisoft Anti Malware was able to identify just 43 infections; though some of the more serious threats identified by SAS were included in these. If we disregard tracking cookies, then the margins narrow. However, detection rate is only half the battle, and unfortunately EAM was unable to automatically clean some of the more virulent infections found by itself. Nevertheless, it helpfully provides a link to forums for manual removal instructions.
The downside of EAM is the download size, being a huge 91.69 MB, immediately followed by further updates. Anyone on restricted bandwidth or dial up may be advised to look elsewhere, but for an average broadband connection this should not be a factor.
Separating A2 and MBAM is almost impossible. I found them to be on a par with each other regarding their scans, but both require a technical proficiency that many may not possess; A2 requires manual removal of many threats, whilst MBAM forced me to jump through hoops to get it working.
PCTools SpywareDoctor SE also performed well in scanning, finding 24 threats (excluding cookies). Unfortunately, cleaning the system proved more problematic. Despite reporting successful cleansing, SD failed to terminate processes already running, and did not in fact clean some of the more annoying infections. It would also be useful if SD prompted a reboot after cleansing, though it did not do this, and only experience dictated that this would be a good idea.
SD does, however, include real time protection, which most other products don't, and this protection did block those infections that it had failed to clean. Nevertheless, a further scan and clean with SAS was needed to fully clean my test system. A fine effort, but sadly falling short of the mark. Do note that the free version is no longer available from the PCTools website. It can be obtained as part of the Google pack, or from *here. *Warning: This is a Cnet download link. Downloads from Cnet (Download.com) now require the use of a proprietary installer.
Old timer Ad-Aware, coming in at 35.7MB performed reasonably, if not exceptionally, finding a further 24 infections even after cleaning with A-squared, 4 of which represented real threats, whilst the remaining 20 were cookies.
Doing less well in on demand tests were Spybot S&D, and The Cleaner 2010. Spybot was the other program that was actively blocked from running, and nothing I tried could overcome this. It does come with an on demand file scanner which can be run from the command line and set to scan your entire drive. However, after letting this run for over an hour and noting that progress had barely touched my relatively small installation system (2.1 GB) I cancelled. It would take an age to complete the scan, and would only examine files. Registry entries and services would be left untouched. The Cleaner 2010 found absolutely none.
Arovax Shield is still in development, and starting to mature, though there are still bugs to be ironed out. For example, once installed, and after the obligatory reboot to enable it to start it's services, it immediately complained that it could not find Firefox. This is no surprise since FF was not installed on the test system, though I fail to see why it should prevent it from doing its job. Maybe as time progresses this will become more viable, but in my opinion it isn't quite there yet.
And so that leads us to my standard "other recommendations". Internet Explorer has now reached version 8, which I am sure will become the most prolific web browser before too long, and as such will be the most heavily targeted. I stand by previous recommendations that an alternative browser (of which there are many free ones these days, including Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari) will offer a safer browsing experience.
And in order to shut the door after the horse has bolted, there are few more useful than HiJack This, which is still a tool requiring expert help, but can be invaluable in helping to clean an infected system. Fortunately, the expert help is still only a forum away.
And as always, let common sense guide you. Don't run a program from an untrusted source, and don't visit websites where infection is likely. You should also beware of popups from programs that you haven't installed, some of the fake anti-spyware I managed to pick up in my browsing sessions was surprisingly convincing. Remember, sometimes malware will scream into your face that it is there (see pic, not a genuine window amongst them). It will just not tell you what it really is.
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Some issues have been reported on 64 bit systems
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Editor
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This software category is maintained by volunteer editor joeguru. Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or questions they might have by clicking here. |
The comments section below is so lengthy that it has become difficult for our visitors to read. Future posts will now be edited for length and repetition, and personal attacks deleted. You are all welcome to join our Security Forum which is much better-suited for intensive debate.
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Comments
Ah! That's just linguistics... maybe because there are no free anti-spyware with realtime protection, that's why such a title.
I don't think we should crop up another category of anti-spyware which offer realtime protection, or put them in antivirus category, just because they have realtime protection. Both of the above dont make any sense.
The title can of course be changed, with the "remover" removed, to fit in the software with real-time protection.
As per previous responses, any broad general AV Product should already perform Resident/TSR/Real-time scanning & a category already exists for these.
NB Having multiple Real-Time/TSR apps running is a huge performance hit as with AV Products they have to intercept & filter all I/O requests including Disk, File, eMail, Web Protocols + more at the lowest possible layer.
This comment should cover my response to both your recent comments.
From what I understand, it looks like that you want to place software with real-time protection under the AV category. But, I don't understand this point.
There is a reason that some software are classified as antivirus, and some as anti-spyware, anti-adware etc. Its because they target different malware. Antivirus and anti-spyware(and the likes), can all be called as anti-malware in broader terms. However, they are still classified as anti-spyware, and antivirus when it comes to differentiation. Its because anti-spyware target the malware that spy on your computer and data.. hence spyware... whereas the antivirus target the virus, which cause disruption on the system, and are different than spyware.
Like you said that there is a difference between spyware, and trojan... similarly there is difference between spyware and virus. And hence, different categories.
So, my point is that just because a software has real-time protection, does not mean that it should automatically be placed in the AV category. Yes, the AVs have real-time protection, but they still remain antivirus targeting virus. Whereas, even if an anti-spyware has real-time protection, it essentially remains an anti-spyware, and therefore should be placed in the anti-spyware category, and not in the AV category.
Its true that nowadays AVs can catch some spyware too, but for the most part, they target virus... and therefore, software such as MBAM, SAS etc still exist as anti-spyware, otherwise they would cease to exist. Now, if in future, MBAM provides real-time protection in the free version too... it would still be placed under the anti-spyware category, right?
I hope you understand the point that I am trying to make here.
Anvi which was suggested by the user above, essentially is an anti-spyware, and therefore, belongs to this category only, and not the AV category.
I do agree with you that multiple security software with real-time protection would slow down the system quite a lot, specially, on older systems. However, the anti-spyware with real-time protection generally are meant to compliment the resident antivirus, and as they primarily target different malware, they should not conflict with each other. Only thing is the machine should be able to handle that much of load.
Hi Anupam
Feel free to run more than one Real-Time security application on any of your machines, as indicated already a well-selected single broad AV App should easily cover all of the discussed roles very well these days.
If it doesn't, then you need to review your well-selected single broad AV Application.
FYI if you're using AVs that "for the most part target viruses" you do need to understand what most better AV suites these day can & actually do perform.
Also indicated already, multiple real-time applications definitely do have a performance impact as all the various I/O activities that the real-time apps are filtering/monitoring/securing/protecting are passed in turn (sequentially, not concurrently) to each real-time app. This was quickly learnt back in early AV days (early nineties ?!). The performance impact is one of the metrics tested/measured when evaluating AV Suites.
On top of the noticeable performance hit the additional app(s?!) provide very little, if any(?), additional protection.
"On balance, average users will be better served by using one of the single broad spectrum products listed in our Best Free AV review, together with a secondary passive scanner. Other layers such as possibly the addition of a firewall + HIPS, DNS filter and site rating agent (WOT) are worthy of consideration, but IMO loading up with additional programs running in real time is unlikely to increase protection"
Back to semantics again, this Category is specifically Best Adware-Spyware-Scumware Remover which is simply best apps/tools (mostly passive) to detect & remove Adware-Spyware-Scumware as opposed to Anti-Spyware/Adware/Scumware which are apps/tools to secure & protect (RealTime) clean machines & prevent (RealTime) them from being compromised which is more what AV now does & has done for a while.
I see the Category more as a pointer for tools for cleaning already compromised machines rather than utilties or suites to secure & protect clean machines which I think is what you're saying it should be.
If most modern day AVs should be able to provide protection from all kinds of malware, then I don't understand why software such as MBAM, SAS are still there. The only software that I know of that effectively removes virus and spyware alike is Emsisoft Anti-malware. Otherwise, AVs do miss most of spyware, and anti-spyware do miss most of virus, as far as my knowledge goes.
Anyways, it seems like you want to focus more on remover software in this category, as the "title" suggests. So, if Anvi in future is considered worthy enough, then I think a new category has to be created, of "Best Free Adware Spyware Scumware Protector and Remover"... because obviously, it won't fit into the AV category, since its not an AV.
Hi Anupam
MBAM & SAS + others serve excellently as tools for cleanup of compromised machines with old or poor AV protection.
NB Do you mean the only Free Software that you know of.
I'm not aware of too many AVs that miss most spyware & this includes Free products. Spyware/Malware/Scumware removers act as passive scanners as backups to good AVs & also as tools for maintenance & cleanup.
The issues facing us are -
a) what AV product you have running & how well it does a variety of tasks.
b) What activities you use your PC for & potentially how exposed it is to compromise.
c) Defining those compromises &
d) where your AV product may not cover them have supplement products with procedures in place to reduce or close your exposure.
This category as I understand it covers some of d) but not a) which is a separate category.
How well AV Products do a variety of tasks & what those tasks should be is certainly contentious.
I must disagree that an AV/ Real Time antimalware combination is redundant. Two years ago I visited a website which deposited a toolbar installer to my computer. Avast totally missed the installer yet Spyware Terminator caught it. I no longer use either of these (ST has always been a weird program with up and down reviews- yet that time it DID work) but lately have been wondering about a RT antispyware to augment my current AV. That's why the question.
I suspect in your circumstance 2 years ago a site rating agent such as WOT also would have assisted in helping you to avoid the site or at least treat it with more caution.
Although most AV solution providers cooperate well with each other in alerting about new threats & resolving them they do seem to vary somewhat in definitions/categorisation of these threats.
Better products/solutions which do categorise them well also allow you to configure how to actually action them.
Yes, I totally accept your point of view. It's not a good practice to run 2 more real time security programs on your computer. Not only there would be a dip in performance, they can also conflict each other. The AV's today are able to capture most of the spywares that Antispywares with real time protection can. The only factor that determines this is if you want to allow your antivirus to enable detection of potentially unwanted programs. The so called toolbars are essentially not malicious, they are sometimes installed on purpose by certain people, and therefore they don't want their antiviruses to detect them as malware. Hence most antiviruses now come with detection of PUP's but they are usually disabled by default.
If you have enabled detection of PUP's in your AV, then it should be able to defend your system against rogue software, adware (browser hijackers) and spywares (keyloggers), remote control tools, network sniffers, ftp servers etc to a certain extent. If these files appears on your system, without your knowledge, it means that you've been a victim of the malware. The toolbars are actually opt-in or opt-out, it's upto the user to determine whether he wants it on the system or not. So, after all it's not that AV's are not able to detect them - the question is whether the user actually wants these PUP's to be detected, because they are not bad per se, only if abused.
But where these Anti-Spywares shines is that, they are much better than an Antivirus in removal capabilities, that is once your system gets infected by spwares and the like. That is why most tools that you use to cleanse your system after an infection include anti-spywares like MBAM, HijackThis, Old Timer and even anti-rootkits like GMER etc and not an AV.
So I believe this category should be about "Removers" rather than "Real time Protectors"
You are correct that the main advantage for this type of program is to pick up the PUP's (potentially unwanted programs) some mainstream solutions might miss because either they don't regard them as malware, or their heuristics are not programmed to spot this kind of activity. Rather than run a heavy RT program like Spyware Terminator though, IMO WinPatrol which is much lighter and a lot less intrusive would be a better option.
I do use WOT. Interestingly, it was an Education website that deposited the installer. Coincidentally, it was from an Education website that I received the only virus I've ever detected...
A HIPS/ Status guard program like WinPatrol is very good (I use Threatfire now), but I like to think of these malware like STDs: First, if I can avoid putting myself in the position to catch one (by not visiting a site), excellent. Second, I'd prefer to be protected from the exposure (Real-Time) rather than have to treat the symptoms later! :D
Didn't mean to co-opt the comments section. Regards
A sound policy. Your input is appreciated.:)
*A Cautionary Tale*
It started this morning, when uTorrent didn't want to open a torrents folder for me, saying "Contains Dangerous Files" ... That's odd, I thought. Avira and Comodo and Malwarebytes haven't picked anything up.
But I came on here anyway to check out the latest word on malware scanners, and decided to try out some different ones, ideally stand-alone scanners.
For some reason I decided to install AdAware first. Oh dear oh dear.
I remember trying it about a year ago, and moving rapidly on because it seemed to slow my system down something awful, but I thought I'd give it another go anyway.
After the usual installation dithering (should I tick or untick this box if I DON'T want another toolbar or a new home page or search engine...), things got off to a bad start when I discovered that despite downloading the 'freeware' version, you still get lumped with a 31-day trial of the full featured commercial version. I couldn't find a way to decline this, and didn't find it out until the prog ran either.
So. I opted for a full system scan anyway ... talk about slow! It was up to 4 hours and wasn't even halfway through my system drive, before I decided to halt it. Granted it seemed extremely thorough, unpacking everything, but even so ...
(Also to be fair I was running OpenOffice and Firefox at the same time with Process Lasso, which probably slowed it down a bit...)
Anyway, I decided to uninstall it, and that was where the real problems began. Unbeknown to me, AdAware had for some reason created a whole new set of network drivers and bypassed the Realtek ones, no doubt as some kind of firewall setup (part of the commercial package which I didn't want anyway).
So I uninstalled the prog, using Comodo Programs Manager, and at the point where AdAware wanted to reboot to complete the uninstallation, I selected "Later" and instead allowed Comodo to do its post-uninstall clean up. That I think, was a big big mistake...
On rebooting, no network. I checked Device Manager to find four AdAware network drivers not working, and couldn't for the life of me get the standard Realtek one to work. After half an hour of faffing (and unable to google the topic of course) I gave up and just restored my C Drive. (Thank you Paragon!)
So the point of the story?
I don't know if the problem was caused by my running Comodo Programs Manager clean-up, instead of allowing AdAware to reboot and finish the uninstallation. I'm guessing that was the mistake, but I'm not going to reinstall it just to find out. :-) But I think it was a good lesson on the subject of registry and temp-file cleaning...
Any reason for opting for AdAware over MBam or SAS.
We're your MBam definitions up to date?
4 x AdAware drivers ?? When this became a problem were you able to revert to previous driver in Device Manager at all ??
Yes, very true regards AdAware's scanning taking a while & being resource hungry.
Hi ... no particular reason, no. My original intention was to install a selection - AdAware, SAS, MBam etc, and see how they all performed. But the AdAware thing ended up taking my whole day :-)
The drivers issue ... yes. They were definitely added by the AdAware installation - part of a firewall set up seems like the most likely explanation to me - and all with a proprietary name ... "Sun.." something, I forget now. But I'm tempted to do it all again and take a couple of screenshots. Although I don't think it's possible to post images here?
Yes, I suppose with more effort I could have restored the Realtek driver, but AdAware also disabled Comodo Firewall, so what with that and the drivers thing, it just felt safer to wipe my C Drive and restore it from a Paragon image. I keep a fresh and clean W7 partition image for just such occasions. It's a lot less painful than reinstalling W7 from scratch.
This might be wide of the mark for a variety of reasons, but are you sure these firewall drivers were actually deposited by AdAware? I say this because neither the free or pro versions of the AdAware we feature has a firewall. Their "Total Security" package does, but unless they've changed it, they use their own Lavasoft firewall component for this.
The other reason this prompted my comment is your use of the word "Sun.." and I was wondering if you've also been trying out other security products? I mention this because the free version of UnThreat, although not containing a firewall, still installs the firewall Driver, and the code they use is from Sunbelt. This has been commented on before as being left behind and then conflicting with new installs of other network related software.
That's very interesting ...
True, I didn't look in Device Manager before trying AdAware. And "Sunbelt" definitely might have been the name (I wish I'd written it down now haha..).
But I've never heard of UnThreat, and I'm not in the habit of trying a lot of different security apps. CFW, Avira, and Malware Bytes are the only three I use, until today... I'm just now trying out SAS and Emsisoft.
So I'm very curious now ... curious to the point of re-installing AdAware to see what happens. I'll post here afterwards. Naturally I'm hoping I can repeat the whole thing, because if not, that'll just be weird :-)
(Interestingly SAS, Emsisoft, MBAM and Avira have all checked, and pronounced clean, the torrents folder that initially led to my trying out some new scanners. So I still don't know why uTorrent felt that it had to warn me about dangerous files. Maybe it's a community thing like in Free Download Manager.
I expect there's a uTorrent-ish thread on here somewhere, I'll see if anybody else has had this experience.)
For me personally Superantispyware always gets rid of a lot of tracking cookies which both MBAM and EAM both don't pick up. However, the latter two both pick up the more serious stuff such as trojans etc. with Emsisoft in first for me.
CCleaner can delete tracking cookies, including the flash super cookies. I don't think tracking cookies are considered adware, spyware or even fit into the general category of malware. I don't know of any reputable testing site that includes tracking cookies in the test data set.
That is an interesting point. Next time I plan on doing a SAP scan I'll run ccleaner first and see if anything turns up.
I believe if you want CCleaner to clean flash cookies you may have to make a path for that...not 100% sure. But all my flash cookies are cleaned with my settings, just don't remember if I had to make special settings or not. Maybe the periform forum has some info?
Good comment.
I guess the response to tracking cookies is a personal call & depends on how your browsers are configured for cookies plus how often you may visit/use the sites that utilise the offending tracking cookies.
Spyware Terminator has now been removed from this review.
They have now been taken over and the website redirects to one with a red WOT rating.
PCRx is a product of Crawler, so is SpywareTerminator.
I have tried Ad-Aware, Malware Bytes both......but they didnt detect an adware shit that appears whenever I visit ANY website.....its something like Clicksor & Social Buzz ad service thing...!
its so freakin annoying !!!
Can anyone of you suggest me any useful tool ???
PLEASE HELP !!!!!
Raza,
are you able to supply any more details?
What you've indicated so far shows -
a) your browser is affected ? 1) which browser? 2) are other browsers affected?
b) whenever you visit any site, adware of some description appears somehow 1) can you indicate if it is a popup or a redirection? or ? 2) are you able to get to your intended url somehow after the annoying adware is dispensed(?) with?
c) have you tried anything other than just MBAM & Ad-Aware ? ie Spybot S&D, SuperAntiSpyware ?
I have been using Malwarebytes Antimalware for a couple of years and have found no infections. I recently installed Spybot on a recomendation from a techie after he repaired a crash. I ran Spybot in the basic default mode and it picked up 2 pieces of adware W3iIQ5.fraud & freeze.com, I then ran Malwarebytes but it didn't pick it up
You can install a variety of antispyware utilities that will inevitably find something on your computer, but frequently, you'll find that it is either a legitimate program producing a "false positive", or a tracking cookie being misreported as actual spyware. Look in to the details and research the infections vs. the actual files being reported. You will likely find that the infection is not really an infection.
I use both SAS and MBAM and find that frequently both are needed to thoroughly clean a system. I'd like to say that MBAM is all you need, but it's not, I have found real infections in the wild many times where MABAM did not catch the infection, but SAS did.
Ditto what Frank the Tank said, keep more than one product handy & don't just rely on the one.
Ron525 - Silly question possibly, do you have any more info on what the repair was for the crash & possibly what the crash was ??