Do you think avast will ever offer a free anti-spyware program like ad-aware does?
Whilst avast isn’t an anti-spyware it does detect some spyware issues and this number is increasing. There have also been numerous topics on this in the forums, where Alwil have been non committal on this but many have asked for it to be included. My concern is that it doesn’t become a part of the anti-virus program if they did, I don’t want avast to become a bloated suite of programs like Norton.
I much rather pick my own security tools so they aren’t all in the same basket and possibly vulnerable to a common flaw/exploit.
avast! does detect spyware (unlike AVG Free and AntiVir Personal, which don’t- you have to buy the pay version to get detection of ‘potentially unwanted programs,’ or whatever they call them- although the distinction is sometimes a bit vague.)
However, the detection rate may not be that brilliant:
When it came to adware and spyware, none of the free scanners performed well. The best of the worst was AVAST, which removed 33% of the active components of the adware and spyware installed to our test system.
http://antivirus.about.com/od/antivirussoftwarereviews/a/freeav_2.htm
You’d still be well advised to get a couple of good anti-spyware programs like Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy for cleaning, and Ewido and a-Squared for checking out suspect files (as well as cleaning).
Several ‘Internet Security’ packages just use one of these programs anyway, and AV’s that have their own often haven’t performed that well in anti-spyware/adware tests, so they don’t really provide any advantage.
So, you can’t say avast is an antispyware (or a full one) and you can’t sell avast as being so.
So, why don’t they just add antispyware module (plugin) to avast? ;D 