Spyware Doctor has been downloaded over 100 Million times; with a million more downloads every week. Millions of people worldwide use Spyware Doctor to protect their identity and PC security.
Spyware Doctor has consistently been awarded Editors' Choice, by leading PC magazines and testing laboratories around the world, including United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany and Australia. All current versions of Spyware Doctor have won Editors' Choice awards from PC Magazine in United States. In addition, after leading the market in 2005, Spyware Doctor was awarded the prestigious Best of the Year at the end of 2005.
Spyware Doctor continues to be awarded the highest honors by many of the worlds leading PC publications such as PC Pro, PC Plus, PC Authority, PC Utilities, PC Advisor, PC Choice, Microdatorn, PC Answers Magazine plus number of reputable 5-star ratings including CNET's Download.com and Tucows.
Detects, removes and blocks all types of Spyware.
Did you know that numerous programs tested against Spyware Doctor detected only small fraction of Spyware and completely removed an even smaller amount? Also most of them were unable to effectively block Spyware in real time from being installed on users PC in the first place.
Spyware Doctor has the most advanced update feature that continually improves its Spyware fighting capabilities on daily basis. As Spyware gets more complex to avoid detection by AntiSpyware programs Spyware Doctor responds with new technology to stay one step ahead.
Easiest to Use
Spyware Doctor is advanced technology designed specially for people, not experts. That is one reason why it won the People's Choice Award in 2005 and 2006. It is automatically configured out of the box to give you optimal protection with limited interaction so all you need to do is install it for immediate and ongoing protection.
Spyware Doctor's advanced OnGuard technology only alerts users on a true Spyware detection. This is significant because you should not be interrupted by cryptic questions every time you install software, add a site to your favorites or change your PC settings. Such messages can be confusing and lead to undesirable outcomes such as inoperable programs, lost favorites or even Spyware being allowed to install on the
PC Magazine's Review:
Given the other strong antispyware options on the market today, PC Tools' Spyware Doctor left us underwhelmed. Its OnGuard real-time blocking capability did little to prevent infestation in our testing. And its interface, which seemed straightforward at first glance, became a tedious, mazelike experience when it came to configuring settings beyond the basics. Spyware Doctor's best feature is the detailed and informative descriptions it provides for the malware it detects, but that bright spot isn't enough for us to recommend it over a well-rounded and more effective product like
Ad-Aware SE
or our Editors' Choice, Webroot's
Spy Sweeper
.
After completing a scan, Spyware Doctor displays a dialog box to warn you about running processes that it considers risky and recommends that you terminate them—an all-or-nothing decision, as there's no mechanism for selecting individual processes. Oddly, we found that Spyware Doctor sometimes identified itself as a pest, and that electing to terminate it would close the application.
Spyware Doctor then organizes other traces it finds in a cramped listview. Unlike Ad-Aware and
SpySubtract
, it provides no easy way to select all the traces associated with a single malware component. Seeing enough of the description to make an informed decision requires double-clicking on a list item. The payoff is that the data you get from doing so is quite informative.
Spyware Doctor identified and successfully removed a number of adware and spyware threats. It even managed to remove the browser toolbars that many other antispyware products leave behind. But it missed enough that we were still confronted by a constant stream of pop-up ads while we surfed.
Spyware Doctor offers a wide variety of real-time blocking options, but configuring them requires navigating a variety of confusingly arranged panes. And in the end, turning on all the real-time blocking capabilities had little apparent effect on our test machine's susceptibility to infestations. The real-time scanning also placed significant demands on the system: When we tried setting its detection interval to the shortest possible value (5 seconds), it began consuming almost all of our CPU cycles and slowed the machine to a crawl.
Even though Spyware Doctor managed to detect and remove a fair number of the spyware and adware infestations that we encountered, shortcomings with its interface and real-time blocking record make it less than appealing when so many other choices are available.
PCWorld's Review:
PC Tools' $30 Spyware Doctor 3.2 promises to snuff out the most elusive adware and spyware applications, so we pitted the software against the latest versions of two PC World favorites, Microsoft's free AntiSpyware and Sunbelt Software's $20 CounterSpy. Our results show that both AntiSpyware and CounterSpy remain top choices, while Spyware Doctor has promise but needs some fine-tuning.
To start off our latest round of tests, we infected a system with a newer variant of the Banker Trojan horse, a keystroke logger commonly used alongside phishing scams.
We expected our shipping version of Spyware Doctor to excel at this test, because its OnGuard feature monitors application behavior to stop this type of threat. However, Spyware Doctor failed to detect the keylogger during the infection stage, and then a system scan also missed it.
Neither the beta AntiSpyware nor the shipping CounterSpy (version 1.0.29) purport to detect such infections behaviorally, but each program ferreted out one of the Trojan horse's files. On the other hand, each failed to detect the in-memory process and the core file responsible for loading the keylogger. Evidently, all three apps have work to do in this area.
Using procedures we established during April's "Spyware Stoppers," we tested all three tools on a PC we had infected with 45 adware and spyware programs.
In our previous tests, Microsoft AntiSpyware detected and removed 91 percent of infectious agents. Unfortunately, the current version does not detect or remove the controversial Hotbar and WhenUSearch adware programs, which caused its overall average detection rate to drop to a still-impressive 89 percent.
For its part, CounterSpy continues to detect both Hotbar and WhenUSearch--and its detection rate in this latest round of tests increased from an 85 percent overall average to an excellent 92 percent.
Tests of Spyware Doctor proved time consuming. First, the app consistently stopped responding when the scan reached the 23 percent mark.
After some time we narrowed the problem down to ad software from BullsEye Network; and once we used that program's own uninstaller, we were able to continue with the scan. (A few days after we contacted PC Tools about the BullsEye software glitch, the company issued a fix.)
Eventually we successfully completed a scan, and the end result was a respectable removal rate of 79 percent.
Subsequent scans with Spyware Doctor proved less troublesome, although we disliked the app's repeated attempts to access the Internet. PC Tools says the software is performing a "license code validity check" to monitor the active copies of the software.
And that is just one more reason why we recommend that you stick with either Microsoft's AntiSpyware or Sunbelt Software's Counterspy over Spyware Doctor. Though the application shows real potential, right now it isn't in the same league as these two less-expensive competitors.
