Pros & Cons

SpySweeper 1.03 Specs

Type:

Personal

All Specs

A recent entrant in the spyware removal field, Webroot Software's SpySweeper doesn't claim to do anything especially revolutionary, but it does claim to do everything we were looking for. It let us down, detecting only 7 out of 20 pieces of spyware and clashing with Norton AntiVirus.

We were glad to see a warning from SpySweeper that removing BrilliantDigital would cause Kazaa to fail. SpyBot issued a general warning that such things could happen, but only SpySweeper was so specific.

Troublingly, SpySweeper missed some well-known spyware applications, including Aureate/Radiate, eZula, and Web3000. Despite Webroot's claim to remove key loggers and Trojan horses, the product didn't remove NetObserve, WinWhatWhere, or NetBus.

As with BPS Spyware/Adware Remover and PestPatrol, Norton AntiVirus 2003 failed spectacularly following the spyware removal process, and on one of our test configurations the system became so unstable that it was unusable. Webroot confirmed the problem but couldn't explain it.

Final Thoughts

SpySweeper 1.03

1.0 Dismal

About Our Expert

Larry Seltzer

Larry Seltzer has been writing software for and English about computers ever since—much to his own amazement—he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.

He was one of the authors of NPL and NPL-R, fourth-generation languages for microcomputers by the now-defunct DeskTop Software Corporation. (Larry is sad to find absolutely no hits on any of these +products on Google.) His work at Desktop Software included programming the UCSD p-System, a virtual machine-based operating system with portable binaries that pre-dated Java by more than 10 years.

For several years, he wrote corporate software for Mathematica Policy Research (they're still in business!) and Chase Econometrics (not so lucky) before being forcibly thrown into the consulting market. He bummed around the Philadelphia consulting and contract-programming scenes for a year or two before taking a job at NSTL (National Software Testing Labs) developing product tests and managing contract testing for the computer industry, governments and publication.

In 1991 Larry moved to Massachusetts to become Technical Director of PC Week Labs (now eWeek Labs). He moved within Ziff Davis to New York in 1994 to run testing at Windows Sources. In 1995, he became Technical Director for Internet product testing at PC Magazine and stayed there till 1998.

Since then, he has been writing for numerous other publications, including Fortune Small Business, Windows 2000 Magazine (now Windows and .NET Magazine), ZDNet and Sam Whitmore's Media Survey.

He is co-author of Linksys Networks: The Official Guide, author of ADMIN911: Windows 2000 Terminal Services and Webmaster of ADMIN911 and CPA911.

Larry can be reached at larryseltzer@ziffdavis.com.

Check out Larry Seltzer's introductory column: Ziff Davis' Security Supersite: Blocking the Bad Guys