For this week’s Freeware Frenzy I will be taking a look at Ad-Aware SE Personal 1.06. This is the latest build of Lavasoft’s popular, free anti-spyware program. We all know the importance of regular spyware scans and I know I’m not the only one with an arsenal of programs to combat the problem. I scan my system every ‘whenever I remember to’ which ends up being about once a month. I’ve been using Ad-Aware for a couple years now and it is a great addition to any anti-spyware program set.

Ad-Aware is a compact program but contains all you need to stop spyware in its tracks. Now, no spyware detection is perfect, so some may slip through the cracks but hopefully one of the other programs you have can pick up the stragglers. I scanned my system 34 days before writing this review so I know there is some spyware to zap now. Interestingly, I had not had any obvious problems in the last month. No unwanted pop-ups, redirects, slowdowns, crashes or any of the other problems that accompany spyware.  But the fact that Ad-Aware still found 39 critical objects shows that not all spyware is obvious, and it’s important to scan regularly to prevent the programs from taking hold of your system.

After you open up Ad-Aware, the buttons on the right setup your scan. Status tells you how recent your definitions file is, when you scanned last, how many objects removed in total and has links for Upgrade and Check for Updates. You can check for updates as often as you like, but if it’s been more then a week or so Ad-Aware will automatically remind you to check.

Scan Now gives you options for what type of scan you want, Full, Smart, Custom, or Volume (To check for Bonzi Buddy on your floppy). Ad-Watch is not available in the free version, it is real-time ad monitoring. Add-ons are available, and finally the help file, which is excellent.  Buttons along the top are Ad-Watch, Settings, Quarantine list, WebUpdate and About. Settings are extensive, allowing you to customize scans, logfiles, Ad-Aware’s look and various other things. The one issue here is that startup scanning is disabled for the Free version, so you have to manually start scans. I don’t find that to be a major problem though.

After the system scan finishes, you see the scan summary. First in the list are your MRUs. Most Recently Used Items are negligible, meaning they do not present a threat to the system but they are things you may want to clear such as recent documents and used applications. Second are your tracking cookies. These are considered Data Miners, meaning they are tracking where you go on the web and could be used by malicious programs to covertly monitor your activity. Next on the list comes any specific spyware. My system had some files related to CoolWebSearch. I can assure you programs like this rarely live up to their namesakes. Last is “Other” which found a file in my Windows directory that is considered malware. Seeing as I didn’t know what this was, I went ahead and right clicked and hit “More Info on this item”. Ad-Aware tells me that the file is unnamed but it is known to install other items. It has to go. I checked each item on the scan summary page for deletion. If you want additional information on specific files and items Ad-Aware found, you can click on the Critical Objects and Negligible Objects tabs at the top. The Scan Log tab gives you a text file of everything Ad-Aware found and a list of your running processes. This is handy if you have a particularly difficult bug and you need outside help. I have my Ad-Aware setup so that selected files are deleted, but you can have them quarantined instead, if you think one of them might be needed.

So in conclusion, Ad-Aware is an excellent anti-spyware program. It is easy to use and to tweak, the help files are well made and the scanning does a great job of finding the baddies. If you haven’t already tried this program, I highly recommend the download, which you can find here: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/