It was true in past decades that you could rely on brand names to guarantee quality, but it was always touch and go in the personal computer world. It has gotten far worse and one product I used to use and highly recommend has gone very bad. Lavasoft’s AdAware used to be a front line weapon against malware. Now it is owned by people who made their money scamming people online. The most galling fact about this purchase is that they used to falsely sell AdAware!
It looks like Malwarebytes and Spybot: Search & Destroy are the go to programs now. I’m waiting for the release of the gold version of Spybot 2.0. These days I do not rely on such programs as much, mainly due to using OpenDNS to filter addresses and Firefox with AdBlock Plus and NoScript to further keep bad links out. While I don’t surf “bad” sites, there has been a growing trend of hacking big websites and ads. So nobody is safe right out of the box.
Thanks to my precautions, I do not get much malware found on my system, if ever. It has been years since I saw anything other than the odd suspicious cookie.
Still, it is sad to see what happened to AdAware. If you do not stay up to date on what is going on, the possibility of being at the mercy of con artists, thieves, and other evil doers increases greatly.
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