internet utilities

I own McAfee Internet Security Suite 2004 but I purchased the stand alone version of this McAfee AntiSpyware 2005 program even though basically the same program is bundled as part of the "Privacy Service Program" with McAfee Internet Security Suite 2004 v6.0 . I did not want to use the Privacy Service program at all so I figured this would work best for me. I also decided could also easily use this as a stand alone program in the future along with another company's antivirus program such as Symantec's Norton Antivirus.

This McAfee Antispyware program is very simple to use and it seems to work well. You can open up the program's display properties anytime and monitor its activity and you will see it working as it scans web pages in real time as you browse using Internet Explorer. You can also schedule system wide scans and it has customizable controls so you can enable trusted spyware or adware programs not to be blocked. The biggest drawback is that it does not automatically detect and remove tracking cookies. Its main advantage is realtime scanning and blocking of spyware and adware. Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware (basic) are both free to download and work very well also however those programs do not auto update and they don't do essential real time scanning to stop the spyware before it infects your computer. Spybot does have an immunize feature that helps block a pre-set number of common spyware/adware programs but this list is static while McAfee's program uses dynamic scanning with the latest automatically updated spyware/adware detections.

I would recommend you use all three antispyware programs. Download Spybot and Ad-Aware for free and also install McAfee Antispyware 2005 for real time scanning. In this age of spyware, adware, trojan horses, tracking cookies etc. you can't be too safe. I would also recommend a good firewall like Zone Alarm 4.x or the even more feature rich Zone Alarm Pro 4.x ( Zone Alarm 4 with internet cookie, popup, and privacy controls) . Use a good Antivirus program such as McAfee 2004, Norton 2003, PC-Cillin 2004, or Kaspersky.

One more highly rated antispyware program you might want to look at is Webroot's SpySweeper which has all the realtime scanning features of McAfee along with tracking cookie detection. SpySweeper is a seasoned antispyware program known to have one of the highest spyware/adware/tracking-cookie detection rates among all the anti-spyware programs. Although the McAfee Antispyware 2005 is still relatively new to the antispyware game compared to other programs, I would expect this recently released McAfee software to continue to improve this year as this program auto-updates itself with more advanced features and enhanced spyware detections.