Webroot Spy Sweeper Review

Coming from a person who has used just about every available malware removal tool, Webroot Spy Sweeper is by far the best product I have ever used.

These are my system specs:

I have a computer running a Pentium D 820 2.7Ghz processor, 2GB of DDR2 667 RAM, a 160GB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive, and Windows Vista Ultimate.

First of all let me say that I was so impressed with Spy Sweeper that I bought a subscription to its services that runs through 2009.

From the minute I opened the installer I was impressed. The installer is very straightforward and simple. The advanced features are there for those who have lots of experience, but it is easy enough for the not-so-experienced users. The installer asks you everything about how you want it to install (including whether you want shortcuts or not). Once the installer is finished, Spy Sweeper starts doing its work.

Spy Sweeper updates itself VERY regularly, and notifies you if it downloads new malware definitions. It doesn't get in your way too much, like products such as Norton Internet Security do. NIS is always asking you if you want to do this, if you want to do that... Spy Sweeper only asks you if you know what you're doing every so often.

If you are about to visit a malicious website, Spy Sweeper will block you from going to it because of the risk. (www.LyricsDomain.com is one of these that I keep going to by accident and Spy Sweeper keeps me out of Trojan/Spyware hell). If you are installing something that may significantly alter your basic system files, it asks you if that is alright.

Its malware removal is very effective; I've never had a problem with anything returning after it has been quarantined or deleted by Spy Sweeper.

The only things that ever bothered me about Spy Sweeper were these:

For one, Spy Sweeper's default setting is to display its splash screen every time it starts up. That is the little picture that shows in the middle of the screen that tells you that you are using Webroot Spy Sweeper. If you try to click away from it, it freezes your screen for a few seconds until the splash screen disappears. This is easily disabled in the program's settings, but it gets annoying.

Also, when a spyware sweep is running, a lot of the system resources are consumed. Fortunately, there is a sweep scheduler, which means you can tell Spy Sweeper when you want it to do sweeps. I always set mine to 3:00am or 4:00am so I don't have to be using the computer while a sweep is running.

A couple cool things:

Spy Sweeper has two options for sweeping: the Quick Sweep, and the complete sweep. The quick one looks in all the normal places for the most common bugs. This can be really helpful for the more trivial spyware programs.

Also, you can scan individual files with Spy Sweeper, so in case you download a file that you think is suspicious, you can sweep it for malware before you install it.

I definitely recommend that anybody who is looking for malware software buy this product. It is easily worth the money, and if you are prone to getting malware, it will probably pay for itself in the longrun.