... in response to Re: Does this software really work ?, posted by wsbill on Jul 2, 2003Spybot Search & Destroy and Lavasoft's Ad Aware are both free products that are consistantly highly rated. I use both as checks against each other. Another testing site is
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/, which tests your PC over the web. It won't clean it, but it will indicate if your PC is infected by one of the more popular spyware programs.
A survey sponsored by AOL and released last month by the National Cyber Security Alliance painted a disturbing portrait of the average home broadband user. Here are some of the more interesting results of their survey:
91% of users surveyed were infected with spyware. Only 3% of parents with children under 18 used controls to prevent them from seeing porn and other inappropriate content. 86% of users keep sensitive information on their computer.
While the numbers are for broadband, the dial up percentages are likely to be pretty high as well. Spyware is a constant problem, and it can be a hassle to clean sometimes.