Remember the old story which came first, the
chicken or the egg, in the computer world, one has to
ask, "Which came first, Spyware or Antispyware"?
Many have questioned with so many spyware warning coming
out, wouldn't it really be benefitial if the Antispyware
companies were really creating the spyware?
Spyware Spotters and Stoppers
PC Magazine, September, 2004 by John Clyman
Antispyware tools seem to be proliferating nearly as fast as
spyware itself. Choice is usually a good thing—as long as
you make the right one. So for this story we tested two
antispyware utilities we hadn't encountered before, as well
as a significantly revised version of Lavasoft's perennially
popular Ad-Aware, which looks better than ever.
Our
testing also gave us an opportunity to confirm that Windows
XP Service Pack 2 indeed raises the bar for built-in defense
against adware and spyware programs that attempt to
infiltrate your system. To exercise the antispyware programs
fully, though, we made a point of ignoring SP2's warnings
about potentially dangerous behavior, doing our best to act
like an imprudent user lulled by the siren song of free
software, peer-to-peer music swapping, and the like.
