Question about Y! Toolbar and Norton AntiSpyware Efficiency

Well, just noticed that the latest Yahoo! Toolbar version changed its anti-spy app into a partnered Norton AntiSpyware program. Found out when I got Y! Toolbar for my sister yesterday. Worked kinda well, detected some spyware that other anti-spyware programs didn’t. But anyone know if its worth using as a main, dependant Anti-Spyware ? (It is free, though, which is kinda a good thing for users.)

http://www.adwarereport.com/mt/archives/000016.html
read link above happy- dude 8)
don’t use it…
the above site has lots of good information and other programs you can use that might help you happy-dude ::slight_smile:

:slight_smile: Hi Happy :

 If your info is correct, then the info at Eric Howes'
 spywarewarrior site is out-of-date, cause it has :

"Yahoo AntiSpy yahoo.com powered by Pest Patrol (licensed)  "

Yahoo! do indeed seem to have changed their antispyware tool to one supplied by Norton:

http://messages.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/forumview?bn=394500001-antispy

When it comes to spyware detection, it is best to run several applications when cleaning a system because each application will find things missed by another.

Probably the two best free cleaners are Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy, but it’s always good to have a second opinion or even a third or fourth, and running the Yahoo! tool or the free version of X-Cleaner may well find traces the other programs have missed.

If your system is up to date (OS and browser vulnerabilities allow auto-installing spyware) and you still get spyware, it may be worth installing real-time anti-spyware protection. MS Defender provides this for free, but consistently gets poor reviews for detection. You can find some reviews of other products here:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17122.msg191226#msg191226

Beware false positives with this one! :o

Norton Yahoo! spyware scanner told me I had three RAT’s on my system and a porn dialler! ???

All were false alarms.

The dialler is from my ISP and Ewido and a-Squared also flag it as malicious, but the other items were certainly not malicious.

:slight_smile: Hi Frank :

 Ewido used to flag my ISP's Dialer as a "moderate risk"
 until I filled out their "Submittal Form" which included
 sending them the file which several days later they had
 removed or put an exception into their database;
 why not do likewise ?

I did, years ago. ???