This entry in the Spyware Weekly Newsletter comments on the fact that Ad-Aware has not been updated for some time. I regularly use LavaSoft Ad-Aware to purge my system of spy-/ad-ware, but I had also noticed that there were no updates since late September and found it hard to believe that no new spyware had cropped up since then. This was confirmed to be true after reading the SpyWare Weekly article, although the Ad-Aware forum explains that a new version is due in February. Still, this is too long to be without updates or a new version, so at the suggestion of the article, I downloaded SpyBot Search And Destroy, a free utility similar to Ad-Aware that not only removes spyware, but also gives you the ability to remove keyloggers, dialers, usage tracks, trojans, and hijackers. It’s not as easy to use as Ad-Aware, unfortunately, at least not at first, but it seems to be at least as powerful and is definitely being updated often. I highly recommend running some utility of this kind to clean your system of the programs and add-ons that are installed without your knowledge, even if you only rarely install new programs, and especially if you use P2P clients like Kazaa etc.
