Aluria Spyware Eliminator 4.0 Review

Product: Spyware Eliminator 4.0 Price: $29.99 Company Info: Aluria Associates Editor Rating: 4 stars Download Spyware Eliminator

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Pros
+ Beautiful user interface
+ Excellent spyware removal functionality
+ Some additional “evidence eliminator” functionality built in
+ Spyware definitions are updated more frequently than any other product
+ Great customer support
+ Excellent at removing keyloggers
+ Free spyware hotline (1.888.627.4650 option 2) available to the public

Cons
- Doesn't recover as much disk space as other products

Spyware Eliminator Product Review

“A virus can ruin your computer. Spyware can ruin your life.”

This catchy phrase is more than just a marketing gimmick. While a computer virus can delete files and corrupt your data, spyware can monitor your surfing habits and send them to people you don’t know. It can cause objectionable material to appear on your computer at the worst times (what could be worse than a porn pop-up during an important presentation?). It can hijack your browser and expose your children to material you don’t want them to see. Spyware Eliminator is an effective tool that can protect you against these problems.

Aluria's latest release of Spyware Eliminator includes a major revamping of the user interface as well as new technology that may set a new standard when it comes to fighting spyware. Aluria is a credible vendor, with more than 35 million copies of their software sold to both home users and large Fortune 500 corporations such as AOL.

Aluria's frequent updates to Spyware Eliminator make it one of the most powerful spyware removal tools on the market. What's more, Spyware Eliminator also offers a variety of evidence elimination functions that will clean up after you and prevent others from spying on your surfing habits. This is becoming increasingly important at work, as more and more companies implement monitoring software to keep an eye on their employees’ surfing habits.

As of December 2004, Spyware Eliminator protects against over 35,000 spyware and adware parasites. It provides thorough coverage by detecting spyware running in memory, stopping browser hijackings, examining your startup settings, and eliminating registry changes made by intruding programs. (One thing to keep in mind is to take vendor counts of spyware signatures with a grain of salt. Many vendors count signatures differently, or inflate their numbers with cookie counts. For more on this, read our article about why counting cookies as spyware is misleading.

Like Giant Antispyware, Spyware Eliminator will immunize your computer against common invaders, such as browser hijackers, unwanted search bars, and pop-up advertising programs. We discovered no problems on either Windows XP or Windows 2000, unlike some of the other products which caused serious browser slowdowns on Windows XP.

Aluria's latest spyware updates (February 2005) put them ahead of the pack when it comes to spyware definitions, but more importantly, the latest version makes use of a new proprietary technology that may one day eliminate the need for definition files completely (more on this below). Overall, they earned the #1 position because of sheer effectiveness, frequent updates, excellent refund policy, and prompt customer support.

Usability

Spyware Eliminator has a well-designed user interface that is simple to use. The latest release has a completely revamped user interface that does away with the ugly "Mac" interface found in prior versions.

The first time you run the program, you will be presented with a "Security Center" screen that shows you what Aluria products you have installed. Like other major security vendors, Aluria appears to be moving towards an integrated solution that includes anti-spyware, anti-virus, and anti-spam functionality.

To start removing spyware, click on the "Anti-Spyware" button at the top of the screen. This leads you to a large "Scan Now" button that you press to begin the process.

The latest version is fast. Scanning on our Windows 2000 test computer took only 7 minutes (the previous version took 29 minutes), which was faster than virtually every other products. We watched the files being scanned and verified that Spyware Eliminator does a full scan of your hard drive and avoids taking shortcuts h can ultimately leave a lot of spyware on your PC.

Spyware Removal

We ran Spyware Eliminator on two infected PCs running a combination of old and new spyware programs. It did not flag any legitimate applications as spyware.

In our spyware removal effectiveness test, Spyware Eliminator tied for first place in detecting and disabling spyware. It disabled 86% of all of the test spyware, which is extremely impressive considering that we included some of the latest spyware programs (less than a month old). What was truly an accomplishment though was the detection and removal of CoolWebSearch. Spyware Eliminator is the only commercial product that we know of that successfully removes this stubborn program.

We asked Aluria how they managed to achieve this, and while they wouldn't give us specifics, apparently they were able to develop their own version of the same technology that Giant AntiSpyware used to achieve such excellent results. This technology does not need signature files and as we learned while testing Giant's software, was able to eliminate over 85% of spyware. Unfortunately, Giant is no longer available to purchase, but it is now apparently available once again in Aluria's product. While the technology may be effective by itself, Aluria has chosen to combine it with the standard "signature" approach and the results are impressive.

In our previous review, we stated that Spyware Eliminator wasn't as effective in completely cleaning out all old traces of spyware. Since then, Aluria has made some improvements, although overall, no product on the market does a terrific job of this. While this isn't critical, the remaining traces continue to consume disk storage space even though they are not being used. The latest version of Spyware Eliminator completely cleaned 60% of the spyware, up from 15% a few months ago. One thing our test doesn't take into account is the savings in storage space that result from Spyware Eliminator's regular clearing out of the internet cache and other history files (See "Other Options" below). If you surf the web on a regular basis, then these savings should more than make up for any left over spyware files.

We also tested Spyware Eliminator against keyloggers. Keyloggers aren't the ordinary type of spyware that is used for marketing purposes. Instead, keyloggers record your actual keystrokes and then send it on to a third-party. They are usually used to record passwords, credit card information, PIN numbers, and other personal information. Aluria claims that Spyware Eliminator is effective against dozens of keyloggers, and we found that it did disable some of the more common ones. In contrast, Spy Sweeper crashed while these keyloggers were running.

One annoyance Spyware Eliminator has is that the current version will detect the same spyware multiple times if it has different names. For instance, Cashback and BargainBuddy utilize most or all of the same files, yet it's detected twice. The good news is that we haven't seen any false positives in our testing, a tactic some of the sleazier companies will use to convince trial customers to buy their product.

Rollback

Spyware Eliminator allows you to rollback any changes it makes. This is helpful if you have wiped out spyware that is needed by an otherwise useful program (Real Player and Kazaa are typical examples of software embedded with spyware on your PC that won’t run without it).

Customer Support

Aluria's customer support was quick to respond to our test emails. In particular, we pointed out a piece of spyware that Spyware Eliminator failed to remove, and the fix was included in the following week's update. Aluria has a solid track record of releasing frequent updates to their signature file (sometimes every other day or so), and the latest update included updates for some of the latest spyware programs to hit the net.

What truly makes Aluria stand out from other companies however, is their "Spyware Hotline" (1.888.627.4650 option 2). Anyone can call this hotline for help with a spyware-related problem, whether they are an Aluria customer or not. This is over and above the usual "self-support" forum that most companies provide.

Finally, Aluria also offers a "no-questions-asked" customer return policy, which we have verified with a number of their customers.

Other Options

Version 4.0 includes "Active Defense" shields, which is improved functionality that provides you with real-time protection against spyware drive-bys and other hostile invasions. And of course, this version also includes a scheduler for running spyware scans at night when you aren't using your PC.

The WhenU Debate

Recently, Aluria has come under some scrutiny for certifying WhenU as a "spyware SAFE" company based on the claim that WhenU is now adhering to a set of over two dozen anti-spyware criteria. The program will no longer detect and automatically remove WhenU programs (such as Weathercast) from your computer, although these programs can be easily uninstalled from your computer using the "Add/Remove Programs" applet in Control Panel.

In response to these criticisms, Aluria has made a new tab ("Consumerware") available from within their product to allow you to remove these products if you indeed don't want them. If on the other hand, you intentionally installed these software products, they won't clutter up your default scan results. It's your choice.

Summary

Spyware Eliminator offers superior protection and immunization against annoying Spyware. With the release of the latest release, Aluria has included a groundbreaking new technology for detecting and disable spyware as well as a radical redesign of the user interface. Aluria also offers the most frequent updates of any product we tested. With the introduction rate of new spyware and adware currently at unprecendented levels, the frequency of updates has become a critical feature in anti-spyware tools. You also get additional functionality that can be used to remove evidence of your surfing habits on a regular basis.

About the only disadvantage we found with Spyware Eliminator is that after disabling spyware, it didn't do as good of a job thoroughly deleting the old files. While these files were harmless, they still continued to consume disk storage space. However, our tests didn't attempt to measure the disk storage space savings that result from clearing out the browser cache and other history files, so for most people, Spyware Eliminator should outperform here, too.

Having passed our rigorous testing process, we can recommend Spyware Eliminator as one of the most effective spyware fighters on the market.

Purchase Price: $29.99
Free Trial: Yes

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