Spyware blockers: SpyBot – Search & Destroy

SpyBot – Search & Destroy (you see it most often shortened to Spybot-S&D) is a great program that I’ve been using for quite some time. Spybot-S&D is especially helpful when I need to check out a computer that I suspect is infected with spyware and I don’t have a commercial anti-spyware package at hand, because Spybot-S&D is free and quick to download.
Spybot-S&D does the typical manual scan for spyware on your computer’s memory and hard drive, but it also includes some interesting features that allow you to automatically delete the “most recently used” lists from myriad places on your computer that keep track of what documents you have opened, what movies you have viewed, and what Web pages you have visited.
Spybot-S&D does have real-time spyware blocking, but it’s turned off by default and isn’t easy to find. To find it, you must have the menu in advanced (expert) mode, and then you must choose ToolsCResident. After it’s acti¬vated, it does work nicely and remembers block or don’t-block decisions you’ve made so that it won’t pester you every time you load the ActiveX controls that you know are safe.
An interesting and cautious feature of this product is that when you click the button to fix (mostly delete) what it has found, Spybot-S&D automatically creates a restore point when running on Windows XP before it makes changes. That way, if deleting anything it found creates a problem, you have a known restore point that you can get back to.

In keeping with the general privacy theme, Spybot-S&D also includes a built-in file shredder that will permanently remove files of your choosing. Because dragging files to the Recycle Bin does nothing more than mark these files as deleted and doesn’t really delete any information, you need a file shredder if you want to get rid of the contents of a file and know that it’s really, really gone.
One last note about this product is that it supports 33 languages. That kind of extensive language support is rare for a free product, and it helps make Spybot-S&D a widely used tool.

SpyBot - Search & Destroy

Also check out:
Ten Spyware blockers programs for Businesses