antivirusprotection

Setup:
Spy Sweeper 5.3 is available for retail purchase or download, with or without antivirus enabled. We question why Webroot would make antivirus an option–shouldn’t it be standard? In light of this, we recommend buying the antispyware version only at $29. Current Spy Sweeper customers’ apps will be automatically upgraded to version 5.3 (with an option to enable antivirus for $10 more). We suggest all Spy Sweeper users wait and purchase the antivirus component in a future release. Note: the trial copy of Spy Sweeper will not remove any spyware it identifies unless you purchase the full product; we think this is wrong, and a crude way to force sales.
We experienced no difficulties installing Spy Sweeper 5.3 with Antivirus. After installation, we were asked to reboot our system.
Should you decide to uninstall Spy Sweeper, Webroot includes an uninstall icon on the All Programs list. After rebooting, we found no trace of Spy Sweeper in the Program Files directory or the system registry.
Interface:
The Spy Sweeper 5.3 with Antivirus interface remains unchanged from that of Spy Sweeper 5, with the exception of a tiny upper-right corner panel informing you whether antivirus protection has been enabled. Webroot’s integration of Sophos is invisible; for example, there’s no separate configuration page for antivirus scans, which initially started us wondering just how much antivirus protection exists within Spy Sweeper.

To tweak antispyware scans for individual files or folders, simply use the various Spy Sweeper configuration screens; however, we could find no separate configuration options for the antivirus part of the product, such as protective settings to block incoming viruses from e-mail or IM, a setting found in many traditional antivirus products.
Spy Sweeper’s interface is crisp and intuitive, the result of many hours of user-interface testing. For example, we like that during a scan, the color-coded tabs on the scan page mark your progress: Sweeping, Quarantine, and Summary.

Performance:
Webrot Spy Sweeper 5.3 is very slow at a scanning, requiring more than one hour to scan our Acer Travelmate 8200 laptop; other antispyware products completed their respective scans in around 20 minutes. That said, Spy Sweeper’s remains one of the better antispyware apps we tested. In exclusive testing by CNET Labs, Spy Sweeper’s active shields identified and blocked seven out of eight spyware samples we attempted to install, missing only one generic Trojan, Compare-prices.zip. For scanning and removing existing spyware samples, Spy Sweeper’s caught six out of eight. As for the removal itself, in a majority of the cases Spy Sweeper left some spyware residue behind, removing only three of the eight samples, creating the possibility that some of the sample spyware could reinstall itself. This last criteria sunk Spy Sweeper’s overall performance score. Webroot says Spy Sweeper removes only as much of the potential spyware as necessary to disable it, but we found competing antispyware apps removed all traces of some of the same samples that Webroot chose to leave behind, so that argument didn’t wash.

Spyware is a crafty and insidious threat, so you need good tools to combat it. Some anti-spyware programs can stop most attacks, but none stop enough.
You woudn’t use an antivirus app that failed to block or remove every virus it might reasonably encounter, yet anti-spyware apps that stop only about a third of the threats are often deemed acceptable, and ones that capture three out of four are praised as excellent. (We admit that we’ve been so desperate for some protection that we’ve been guilty of the latter ourselves at times.) It’s almost enough to make us throw up our hands in defeat—almost, but not quite. Unfortunately, even this subpar protection is better than none—and better than what you’ll find included with most security suites.
We evaluated nine antispyware apps that were updated fairly recently. Their results, on the whole, were an improvement over past versions—an encouraging sign. We tested the products on their ability to block spyware and keyloggers from installing on a clean system, as well as their success at removing the malware on an already-infected system. To avoid conflicts, you should use only one antispyware tool to block incoming attacks, but we strongly recommend that you use two or more to scan your system regularly, in the hope that each will cover the gaps in the other’s protection. And, of course, you’ll still need to keep your wits about you to lessen your chances of getting screwed by spyware.