Thread: Edgar Boucher

The new anniversary edition of Ad-Aware Pro, Lavasoft's antispyware application, is unfortunately nothing to celebrate.

Though it brings in an antivirus engine to supplement its antispyware scans, the program missed a large percentage of malicious files--including adware and spyware--on test scans.

In scanning tests, Ad-Aware Pro found only 83.6 percent of 111,833 Trojan horses, spyware, and other malware samples. Its performance varied greatly by malware type; for example, though it caught a respectable 96 percent of remote-control "backdoor" malware, it identified only a dismal 77.4 percent of Trojan horses.

Ad-Aware came out poorly in our usage tests, too. Immediately after we installed it, the program warned of suspicious files and ran a scan. Ultimately, the files were safe-and actually required for an encryption program.



We took the recommended action of allowing access once (rather than quarantining or ignoring the files), which led to a frustrating loop with AdAware displaying the same warning and running the required scan over and over.

Beyond that the program's interface contains sections that display program status, allow for easy scheduling or execution of scans, and give you control over some realtime protections.

The site-blocking feature did successfully block the Zango Web site, which distributes a generally unwanted adware download. But the real-time protection doesn't extend to scanning a Ad-Aware does check files when they're opened, and its behavior is likely meant to allow it to run alongside regular antivirus programs without conflict. But considering that other antivirus programs can get rid of spyware, cookies, and adware too.