Spyware Detection and Removal

Free Antivirus Software, Free Online Virus Scan

The free antivirus programs listed on this page allow you to detect computer viruses, remove or repair infected files, prevent infection, detect and remove email viruses, etc. There are also free online virus scanning services available for those who prefer (or need to) scan for virus that way.

Note that this page does not list commercial antivirus solutions like Symantec's Norton Antivirus 2005 , McAfee VirusScan Home Edition , McAfee VirusScan Professional or Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal .

Disclaimer

The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.

Free AntiVirus Utilities

ClamAV is a free command line antivirus scanner for Unix systems. You can also integrate it with your mail server for scanning your email messages and attachments. It is able to scan inside archives like RAR archives, Zip archives, Gzip and Bzip2 archives (that is, it has unpacking engines for those types of compressed archives). If you are a programmer, you can even integrate the antivirus scanner into your own programs. This free antivirus program comes with source code that is released under the GNU General Public License. Prebuilt binary packages are available for numerous Linux distributions (Debian, RedHat / Fedora, PLD Linux, Mandrake), Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, AIX, OSF and Solaris 8 (Sparc).

AntiVir Personal Edition is a free antivirus program for Windows computers. It has a resident component that monitors file movements for signs of viruses. It also allows you to scan your computer and repair files that have been infected. The program comes with a facility to automatically check the AntiVir website for updates to the virus definitions and download them. Updates are free.

The AVG Anti-Virus software comprises a resident program that works in the background, an email scanner (checks your email for viruses), an on-demand scanner (eg, you invoke it to scan your system), the ability to repair certain infected files, and automatic updates of the virus definitions.

F-Prot Antivirus for DOS, Linux and BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD) is free for personal use on personal workstations. (Note: these are separate downloads; scroll down on their page to find the link appropriate for your system. Also note that the Windows and Solaris versions are not free.)

avast! Home Edition is free for home users on non-commercial computers. You have to register your copy and supply them your email address so that they can send you a license key to activate the program. http://www.avast.com/i_idt_1016.html

BitDefender Free Edition is a free antivirus program that includes on demand scanning, scheduled scanning, automatic and manual updates of antivirus definitions, etc. There appear to be versions available for Windows, MSDOS, Linux, Windows CE, and Palm.

Startest is not a full fledged antivirus program like most of the others on this page. It checks your boot sector and certain Windows system files for changes. If they have been modified, the program will inform you and also display the changed code.

Free Online Virus Scan

The free online virus scan from Freedom Internet Security and Privacy scans your hard disk, diskettes, CD-ROMs, network drives, directories and specific files for viruses, Trojans and worms.

This site scans any file that you upload to it with a variety of antivirus programs. It is particularly useful if you are suspicious about a particular file, and want to see if different antivirus software detect anything in it.

This free online virus scanning service will check your system for viruses. Note that the service only works if you use Internet Explorer on Windows since it uses ActiveX controls to do the scanning.

Scan your computer for viruses free with Trend Micro's online service. You will need either Netscape (3.01 or above) or Internet Explorer (4.0 or above). The European version of this service supports IE, Netscape 6+, Mozilla 1+, Firefox (all), Opera 7.5+ on Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Free Spyware / Adware / Trojans / Hijackers / Dialers / Keyloggers Detection, Prevention, Removal

If you ever had programs unexpectedly installing on your system, popping up advertisements, saying voice advertisements or playing music, changing (hijacking) your home page (or start page), modifying your search results, displaying search results when you hit a 404 file not found page, dialing out, and so on, your system has probably been compromised by some spyware, adware, trojan, hijacker or dialer.

Loosely speaking, when this page refers to spyware , it means some program that has been installed on your system that reports something back to the software writer (or website that installed it) - whether it be websites you visit or your activities on the computer or the like. Adware means a program that displays advertisements on your computer; and I don't mean the usual advertisements you see on web pages that you visit: adware pop-up advertising windows (or in some cases, say some voice message) on your system are not generated by the websites you happen to visit. Dialers are programs that get installed on your system and try to dial up to some telephone line somewhere, sometimes incurring you expensive phone bills. Keyloggers record the keystrokes you type on your computer (some are more sophisticated in capturing screen shots, etc), and either log them or report them to the person who installed them.

This page lists some sites and software that you can use to detect such spyware, adware, trojans, hijackers, dialers, keyloggers and what-have-you on your computer. Some of them will also remove them, and others when installed and run will prevent some of these nasties from being installed in the first place.

Disclaimer

The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.

Free Spyware and Browser Hijacking Prevention

This nifty program prevents spyware ActiveX controls from being installed on your computer by setting your system so that these controls are prevented from being installed or run (for the technically inclined, it sets the "kill bit" for these controls). It also blocks cookies from certain websites or companies that are known to use these cookies to track a user's surfing habits. http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareblaster.html

SpywareGuard runs behind the scenes to block spyware from being downloaded or run on your computer. It also has the ability to prevent browser hijacking (whether it is your start page or your ability to search using a search engine or otherwise). http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareguard.html

Free Spyware, Adware, Trojan, Hijacking, Keyloggers Detection and Removal

The beta version of Microsoft Antispyware for Windows 2000 and XP is currently available from Microsoft free of charge, subject to their verifying that your computer is running a legal version of XP. Since this is not the release version of the product, it is possible that the program will expire after some time. The link may also become invalid when the final product is released. If the latter happens, please let me know. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=321CD7A2-6A57-4C57-A8BD-DBF62EDA9671&displaylang=en

Ewido is a trojan scanner that removes trojans, backdoors, worms, keyloggers, dialers and other spyware. It requires Windows 2000 and XP.

a2 Free is an anti-trojan, anti-malware, anti-dialer and anti-worm scanning software. You use it to manually scan your system for malicious software like trojans, dialers, worms, backdoors, denial of service (DOS) tools, keyloggers, sniffers, and the like. It does a scan of processes in memory and the programs stored on your hard disk.

Abtrusion Protector tracks the software that you have installed, and only allows those software to run. If some other software (eg, a trojan) somehow creeps into your system (eg, via email attachments), Abtrusion Protector will not allow it to run (unless you give permission). As such, it serves as a complement to your existing antivirus and anti-trojan programs. http://www.abtrusion.com/Downloads/appersonal.asp

This program attempts to detect keyboard monitoring programs that may be running on your system. Version 1.0 (which was the current version at the time of this posting) is free.

One of the best spyware detection and removal utilities is actually free. It can detect and remove spyware, adware, trojans, hijackers, dialers, malware, keyloggers and numerous other nuisances. It runs under Windows.

Ad-aware detects and removes spyware, adware, trojans, hijackers, dialers, malware, keyloggers, etc. The Standard Edition is free for non-commercial use only.

and.doxdesk is a site that provides free online parasite scanning for your computer. It detects adware, spyware, scumware, homepage hijackers, dialers (they call it "diallers"), etc.

HiJackThis! is a manual utility that can help you detect and remove spyware on your system. Unlike some of the other tools listed on this page , this tool requires you to have some knowledge of what you're looking for, the programs required in your system for it to function properly, and what to remove. It is often a tool that spyware removal experts will ask you to run so that they can diagnose the problem on your system.

CoolWebShredder removes a piece of spyware (or whatever) called CoolWebSearch (also known as CoolwwwSearch, YouFindAll, White-Pages.ws, etc). It is regularly updated to remove the new versions of this hijacker (since new versions of the CoolWebSearch appear to be released frequently to circumvent the spyware/trojan/hijacker removal tools).