Spyware Doctor Review

Antispyware software is a real sleazy marketplace with a lot of unsubstantiated claims. Everybody wants to be the Number One. Here is my scoop on Spyware Doctor (the trial version). The software works as advertised, but it’s no different from other solutions, including the free ones, like Spybot Search and Destroy.

I did not intentionally infect my PC with bugs and then ran Spyware Doctor to see how good it is. I’m not that crazy. I tried it and Spyware Doctor found no threats on my PC, except for Alexa Toolbar and BearShare p2p components. I definitely don’t think that Alexa Toolbar is any threat and telling me that my file sharing app shows ads and is classified as “mild” threat because it may collect personal data is nothing new to me. I knew that when I installed BearShare.

Spywaer Doctor is quite fast, at list faster than other antispyware I use, although not by much. We are talking 20%-50% maybe, not four times as fast. I think it’s fairly accurate that smart scans take about a minute or less and full scan took me probably 5-6 minutes, but that’ because I have a newer PC and my 80 GB hard-drive is half-full. Or is it half empty? I don’t know.

There are also some advanced options that I was not able to fully test, since you have to purchase the software in order to activate them. From what I gather, Spyware Doctor developers (PCTools) took the middle of the road approach by jamming as many options as they could. For instance, I don’t think that cookie remover is a very valuable addition. I can remove cookies by accessing my browser. Do I really need this option in a spyware remover?

Also, some spyware is remarkably difficult to remove. So, I’d appreciate if there was an option to click a button and your PC restarts in the safe mode and starts scanning the drive right away, before all these dlls have a chance to load themselves and become undeletable.