Spyware Doctor

Spyware Doctor claims to be the:

Best Spyware Removal in 2005 & 2006
Award-winning spyware protection to secure your PC against privacy and tracking threats.Spyware Doctor is a top-rated malware & spyware removal utility that …

In Download.com, it’s not the top spyware remover but Spyware Doctor paid Download.com for ads as sponsor so you’ll see it at the top when you search “spyware” there. Review for Spyware Doctor @ Download.com

The good:

• Easy and simple interface
• Quite accurate in detecting spyware, tracking cookie

The bad:

• Must restart for the updates to work
• Irritating pop-ups for user to update practically every 1/2 hr. Eeee!
• Cannot remove the infected items unless you pay. At first I was using this to double check my system because another program that I had installed Spyware Terminator (review soon) didn’t detect some spyware & adware.

Spyware Doctor has 2 options for updates - 1) it updates for you 2) you manually update it. The pictures are when you manually update it - you have to click on Smart Update on top right (beside Help) to update the list of ‘Products’. The Smart Update is very fast - less than 1 min.

Warning! Lots of screenshots after the jump… It may load slower than usual

When it has finished updating the Products, it will pop up this Confirmation menu for restart.

If you click no, the System Status in main menu would be in red - Attention Required

There are 3 options for System Scan, here I selected Full Scan which will take longer. Update first, then scan your system.

Scanning takes super long time! As with scanning for virus or defragmentation, it’s better to run this program alone (without other programs running at the same time) for faster and accurate scanning. Because, as we run other programs or webpages, our computer’s temporary folders are added with new files, the memory also changes, etc.

Ho! Got a cookie. Nothing to be alarm at. Yet. We’ll take a look at what’s the cookie later, after it has finished scanning. Maybe it’s even a cookie I allowed - you know how it is, Hotmail requires cookies, damnit.

After the scanning is finished, there’s description about the spyware/cookie.

Simply irritating is this pop-up - even after I had updated, restarted my PC and finished scanning! Grrr!

Other loaded functions:

For Home & Home Office, it’s FOC :D

But dang! If you need it to remove the spyware, you’ll have to:

Download > Spyware Doctor

It’s ok to detect spyware but you can’t use it to remove it unless you purchase online. Now I’m going to test another spyware program. ;)