Pestpatrol

[clearbluereason]

I recently used pestpatrol on a friend's computer to locate spyware, thanks to Vass for the recommendation. The trial program only has a free scanner (you have to buy it to remove adware), but tells you how to remove what it finds.

PP listed 95 pieces of Adware, OBH etc. but I know that some of what was listed could not be on the computer--no keys, no files, nothing to do with several of the listed problems found... I was skeptical about a few, but I was 100% certain about BonziBuddy and a few other common and somewhat older pieces of spyware. Has anyone else had these "false findings"?

Don't get me wrong I think it's probably the best removal too I've seen in quite some time, but I'm concerned that maybe to help sell the software they are listing items that don't exist.

[paul9]

powerage66 mentioned http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm which has a list of dodgy spyware removers. a lot of these are noted to have false positives to goad a user into purchasing. i don't think pestpatrol is in there, but i'm going to have a look.

[paul9]

yep, it's on that site, under the heading of:
Trustworthy Anti-Spyware Products.
still, false positives may be a selling technique, or an overzealous scanning technique.

[elroy]

I just worked on a pc that had Pest Patrol installed. It removed Kazaa LITE as spyware/adware. Then it listed several registry keys it didn't like but no explanation as to what they were related to.

[nomaxim]

Well, after reading this thread I ran PestPatrol on my parents comp over Thanksgiving.
It reported 41 items of spyware; inc.

Parents comp:
System spy-Key logger
BonzBuddy-Spyware
SystemSoap-Toolbar
Fake CD.99-Cracking Tool
Ezula TopTest-Adaware
Ezula-Adaware
Download accelerator Plus-Browser Help Object
Bearshare-P2P

Now, first of all my parents are novice's when it comes to computers so I really don't see them having some of this.
So I ran it on my comp when I got home today!

My comp:
I get 36 items of spyware;inc
System spy-Key logger
BonzBuddy-Spyware
SystemSoap-Toolbar
Fake CD.99-Cracking Tool
Ezula TopTest-Adaware
Ezula-Adaware
Download accelerator Plus-Browser Help Object
Bearshare-P2P

Hmmm, looks familar to me.

By the way I checked for the keylogger files and registry entries as stated on the PestPatrol site, for manual removal, and could not find them on either system.

[mazdarx7-64]

I use the full version at home, and have some P2P installed, but it does not uninstall it when I run Pest patrol. It also has a nice cookie blocker in it that will let you view sites that require a cookie, but then PP deletes it sometime after you leave the site, or close your browser.

[TM12]

I'm getting the same thing. The key-logger, Fake CD and Ezula always seem to pop-up on the machines I check with free scanner and trying to find the entries to clean it out is like chasing a rabbit down a hole. I think the program has merit because it has found legit entries that could be cleaned and SpyBot and AdAware failed to find but, based on the price and this false positive issue, I think I'll pass on it.

[nunyadam]

I think I will just stay with Spybot. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Why? its free, and the only false positives it gets for me are the same 5 DOS entries. (theres a way to fix it so they don't show up anymore, but I know the computer has been patched so why bother.)

I also use Hijackthis. http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html

[TM12]

I haven't worked with Hijackthis yet but if you're going to stick with one free prog, I'd recommend AdAware over Spybot. I had to clean a massively infected PC recently and AdAware found alot of things SpyBot missed. I think the best strategy is to use at least two scanners.