Anyone use Spybot?

[Steve Schlumpf]

I started using Spybot many years ago when running XP. Put it on my Win 7 machine when I first got it 3 years ago and am now wondering if it is really useful anymore. Not bad for checking for malware but I am not real happy having Teatimer eating resources as it runs in the background. Any pros/cons on this program?

Thanks!

[Bruce Page]

Like you, I ran it on my XP machine. I decided not to use it on my Win7 machine, MS Security Essentials has been doing a good job.

[Jason Roehl]

I don't use TeaTimer anymore (due to resource hogging), but I do scan with Spybot from time to time (on Win7), and the immunization feature is a good one (it blocks known bad websites).

[Chuck Wintle]

just turn the tea timer off mine only runs when i start the app but I like it because it is free and gives some minor security.

[Kevin Bourque]

I had it for years, then Norton Antivirus wouldn't work with Spybot so I had to delete it. Never had a problem with it at all.

[Paul Hinds]

I uses Norton for day to day protection on my Windows 7 laptop and then run SpyBot occasionally. along with a registry cleaner.

[Duane Meadows]

Like you, I ran it on my XP machine. I decided not to use it on my Win7 machine, MS Security Essentials has been doing a good job.

Hope you are correct. However, unfortunately, experience tells me it misses a lot of really nasty stuff. I am running Bitdefender and Malwarebytes both on my Win 10 Installation(and my wife's Win 7). Have had to clean a bunch of stuff off my wife's PC. Hers was slowed down to the point of being unuseable(from malware), and MSE was happily running showing no problems. Have ditched it on all of our machines.

Soon as Win 10 goes gold, going back to Fedora Linux for most of my day to day computing. But I am having fun testing Win 10!

Oh, and just for the record MSE was installed from day one, not after the fact.

[Grant Wilkinson]

I ran spybot for many years, but like you, Steve, I got tired of it using too many resources. Now, I use MSE and Malwarebytes. They can play nicely together, and with the two of them working, I've had no virus or malware/spyware issues on the 9 win 7 machines and 1 XP machine that I maintain. I run a standalone Kaspersky monthly just to make sure. I find that it helps, too, to have a tracking blocker on my Firefox installation. For example, on this forum, right now, the blocker stopped 4 trackers from seeing who I am. Not all of them, or maybe any of them are malicious. I just don't particularly want them to know who and I am to to start sending me crap email.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Thanks everyone!

Grant, I removed Spybot but kept Malwarebytes as it doesn't impact system resources. I run Waterfox and Chrome as browsers, so am curious as to which tracking blocker you would recommend?

[Grant Wilkinson]

Steve: I use donotrackme. So far, so good.

How do you like Waterfox. It's the 64-bit Firefox, yes? Do you see any difference over the 32-bit FF? I figure that the speed of my browser is likely linked more to the speed of my internet connection than to what browser I'm running, but I'm open to be shown to be wrong.

[Steve Schlumpf]

To be honest, I do not see a difference in speed when accessing a website. Still, I do figure that it has to be better using 64-bit simply because it allows for multiple operations to take place at the same time and 'might' eliminate bottle-necking when multiple sites are open.

I'll check out donottrackme. Thanks!

[Jason Roehl]

Steve, try adblockplus.org, too. I found that often various websites would load slowly because the page was waiting on an ad server to deliver up ads before the page displayed. My overall browsing speed increased greatly once I installed AdBlock Plus.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Thanks Jason - will give it a shot!

[Dan Hintz]

I don't use TeaTimer anymore (due to resource hogging), but I do scan with Spybot from time to time (on Win7), and the immunization feature is a good one (it blocks known bad websites).

This. I run a Spybot scan every so often, but I do not have anything running in the background.

[Curt Harms]

Yup, adblock plus & noscript. Noscript takes a moment when you open a new web site to tell it which scripts to allow and which to block. Block the wrong ones and some web sites are pretty much nonfunctional. It's eye opening though to see how many sites want to run ads and crap when you open something like NFL.com.