Webroot SpySweeper scores 0% success rate in malware test ...

[Carol Haynes]

Shock horror ...

Well not really!

There is an interesting article on methodology (and a bit of developer rivallry) in this article from Sunbelt but it makes some interesting points.

[jpfx]

sunbelt are hardly likely to have anything positive to say.. even if they sugar-coat it.
pcmag/world (can't remember which) tout spysweeper as the new anti-spyware messiah.
Someone's being economical with the truth.
For the record, I have registered sunbelt but no longer use it, to my mind it became too obtrusive and slow.

If there's one thing I learnt.. never trust magazine reviews, they're FOS! which makes DC so useful.

[Carol Haynes]

That's one of the reasons I found it so amusing.

I tried Sunbelt's offering - and yes they have a higher hit rate than SpySweeper but that was mostly because of the hundreds of false positives I got. When I complained they didn't didn't deny there was a problem but offered me the opportunity to come back and test it later when some of the 'wrinkles' were sorted out.

I still have Webroot's software on my system (because it is generally considered up there with best wherever you read reviews) but I don't use in realtime mode as it slows down my computer too much. I simply regularly scan my system manually. I also run Outpost with it's spyware plugin which runs in realtime without being a huge drain, but I'm not certain how effective that is as I haven't read any reviews of that.

[tinyvillager]

 Sunbelt's blog is actually better that their software,the rebranded Kerio gave me bluescreens,though i can't
faught them for this since it's not their handy-work,yet.That being said they've had time to fix it up,tweak it
or at least issue a statement cause i know for a fact i'm not the only one who has had these problems.
(search Castlecops and Wilders Security forums)

I've tried thier anti-spyware app and it's heavy as...well it's heavy.It runs like four services in the background
and tries to be too many different things,a system tweaker,pseudo firewall,etc.It should go without saying,if your a spyware app,keep spyware off my machine.If it's a firewall app,keep intruders out.I hate security software suites.I so wish companies would listen to their clients.   

[mrainey]

I've got Avast, CounterSpy, and TrojanHunter running in the background at all times.  Not counting the results of a full scan, the only one that's ever actually "caught" anything is Avast.  To tell the truth, I'm not sure what that says about the three programs.