digit

I went to download.com in search of tools before I found TSF. There is a linked article in the scroll down box located at the bottom of this page:

http://www.download.com/Spyware-Cent...0.html?tag=dir

Microsoft takes on spyware
-12/22/04
Last week I wrote about CounterSpy, a fairly new antispyware utility from Sunbelt Software. I wasn't aware Sunbelt licensed the code base and definition file from Giant Company Software under a co-ownership deal. The story gets more interesting because Microsoft just acquired Giant Company Software. Sunbelt insists its licensing rights are still legitimate, while Microsoft wants to end the relationship by July 2007. Given Microsoft's legions of lawyers, Sunbelt needs to build its own product from the existing code base and set up its own spyware research center.

Microsoft plans to release a beta of its own antispyware utility soon, Yada, yada, yada and just prior to that was:

CounterSpy is cool, FavoriteMan is not
-12/15/04
Yesterday I reviewed CounterSpy, a program from Sunbelt Software, and am pleased to find another capable utility for ferreting out spyware. I have become very skeptical about new spyware-removal programs, because so many of them are scams, but I already had an idea CounterSpy would work since I'm familiar with Sunbelt Software's spam-fighting product, iHateSpam. In addition to its spyware removal, I really like CounterSpy's feature set. It comes with a scheduler, which I set to scan every night, a history cleaner, and a file shredder. The shredder first encrypts files, then deletes them and overwrites the disk space three times--pretty thorough.

To try out CounterSpy, I installed a spyware-ridden MP3 converter on my poor, battered test machine. The scan ran pretty quickly, in a little more than five minutes, and turned up some scary stuff. The worst and most fascinating was a browser helper object called FavoriteMan. According to information around the Web, this little beast periodically connects to its home servers, piggybacking on Internet Explorer so firewalls won't catch it, and downloads other spyware applications such as nCase, Bargain Buddy, and HotBar. FavoriteMan comes from Mindset Interactive. If you come across FavoriteMan on your computer, you might want to let Mindset Interactive know you're not happy about its practices.
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CounterSpy is for 98, I am running it. Difference is that CounterSpy sees Wild Tangent as a threat but on my XP running the Windows version they don't see it all. Gee, what a surprise.

digit

YeeFam

Microsoft AntiSpyware Version: 1.0.501
This version expires on: 7/31/2005
Current User: Owner
Spyware Definition Version: 5687 (2/9/2005 8:01:01 AM)