Legitimate spyware removal software
Stuff I actually use myself.
| Free software | Commercial software |
| Lavasoft AdAware - Excellent program, free for personal use. |
Ad-Aware Plus Edition |
| Spybot Search & Destroy - Excellent, free. | Computer Associates ETrust
Pest Patrol - Good. Be careful though! Very aggressive! Free online scan here Buy Here |
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Microsoft
Antispyware - it has gotten so bad that MS bought an antispyware company! |
Webroot Spy
Sweeper Excellent program - gets most of the stuff |
| HiJackThis - Excellent, one of the best tools for manual removal of shit - free. Requires some technical skill - be carefull, you can cause other problems if you don't know what you're doing. | CWshredder - Excellent at what it does. Removes most varieties of Cool Web Search - purchased by a commercial company recently, but the cwshredder part is still free |
| TheKillbox - Excellent tool to manually delete files in use. Some technical skills required. Be careful with this! It will let you remove most files, including ones you may need. | Crap Cleaner - Not for spyware removal, but a nice program that removes cookies, temporary files, history files, etc. |
| BHO Daemon - Great program to identify & disable Browser Helper Objects | |