Now that you have been introduced to some of the spyware tools that are available, there is a general procedure of attack to rid your system of that pesky software.

First, identify any odd-ball applications listed in Control Panel > Add/Remove programs. You will need to be online to remove certain spyware applications because they require you to go to their website’s uninstall interface. Read carefully! They try to trick users by using odd wording to keep the spyware installed. For example, it could say, “Are you sure you don’t want to uninstall our software? Click yes or no.” In this case, the answer is “No”. Those double negatives can be confusing.

Uninstalling spyware with provided uninstallers saves a lot of hassle later down the road, however, the downside is that some of these uninstallers need an active net connection for the uninstaller to work. Either way, uninstalling everything you can as a first step saves hours of headaches if you do not want to reformat and reinstall the Operating System.

If you simply allow a spyware scanner to try to remove these strains of spyware that appear in “Add/Remove Programs”, you will be left with bits and pieces on the hard drive and in various places in the registry. These left over pieces will have to be removed manually because they are no longer being detected as threats, but may still be reappearing, recreating themselves, and causing problems. So, make sure you uninstall items that are listed here, plus any additional packages that looks suspicious:

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The two most common and most used spyware tools, Lavasoft’s Adaware and Spybot Search & Destroy have been cleaning infected systems for a few years now. Both still come highly recommended for your spyware combat arsenal.

However, an interesting factor has cropped up recently where Lavasoft has removed a large well-known adware vendor called WhenU from their definitions database. That means any utilities produced by the WhenU vendor will be ignored by Adaware scans. This is a very disappointing move for Lavasoft to make. Pest Patrol and Aluria have also failed to include WhenU’s set of pests in their databases. Lavasoft’s response to its removal was that WhenU software was no longer a threat. Many spyware experts strongly disagree. There are other cases of known adware/spyware vendors going after the creators of spyware removal software, which can be found under this list of litigations pursued by spyware vendors when their software was included in various removal utilities.

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