SpyEraser Box

Review: Uniblue SpyEraser


Date: February 19th, 2007
Author: Ryan McLaughlin
Manufacturer: Liutilities
Categories: Reviews, Software
Tags: ,

Spyware can be very dangerous. If it is allowed to get on your computer it can cause havoc with your computer, steal your personal information, or even crash your computer or destroy your personal data. These problems range from adware and popups, to destructive attacks from backdoors, exploits and downloaders. All the more reason to have protection. SpyEraser is one of those forms of protection.

Features

  • Powerful Heuristic threat analysis tools
  • Real Time Online Defense protection
  • Intelligent Control Functions
  • Exceptionally Simple to Use
  • Safe and Trusted

One of the main problems with current anti-spyware programs is keeping up with the flood of new types of spyware. Every day new types of spyware are showing up, and they are finding new ways of infecting your computer. Some of the symptoms of a spyware infection include: sluggish performance, annoying popups, default internet homepage changes, search results look strange and an unexplained increase in your phone bills which can be caused by dialers. In order to deal with this, SpyEraser offers real time online defense protection. What this means is that if you have an “always on” internet connection, then SpyEraser will continuously scan for new threats and new updates so that you have the best protection.

SpyEraser includes an Alert function that will warn you about new malware threats and new variants of existing threats. There is also a Safe List function which minimizes annoying and frequent alarms. The Quarantine function deals with what slips through, easily, in seconds.

In order to provide the best scan possible the SpyEraser scanner not only uses rules and lists of known trouble makers, but they also use heuristics which look for key identifiers so that if a new program comes along they can do a good job of telling if it is bad or good.

Design

The interface for SpyEraser is very well laid out. The main screen gives you the low down on the current status of the computer and the software. Here you will see when the last scan was run and what the results of the scan were. You will also be able to see when the next scan is scheduled. At the bottom of the screen is the spyware definitions date and software version so you know if your version is up to date.

System Overview

There are a group of tabs across the top of the window and a second group of tabs across the right side of the window. Both sets of tabs take you to exactly the same places.

The first tab on the top is where you start and it is called System Overview. The next tab is the Spyware Scan. This screen is where you can start a manual scan and view the results of the last scan. In addition to starting the scan you can also choose what area of the computer to scan. The options are: Memory, Files, Registry Keys, and Cookies. You can choose all or only one of them. Along the left side of this screen is a new set of tabs. These tabs control and give you access to everything that has to do with spyware. The first tab is where you start and it is the spyware scan. The next one down is the scan results of the last scan, if any spyware is found it will be displayed here. The next tab is the Scheduler, this is where you set the scanning schedule. You can choose how often you want your automatic scans to run. The Quarantine tab is where SpyEraser will list all the programs that you have quarantined. The logs tab keeps track of everything you have done. Ignore List is a list of files that you do not what to have scanned. Under the Restore Deleted tab you will see a list of all the files you have chosen to delete, you can also restore any of these files.

Spyware Scan
Scan Results
Scheduler
Quarantine
Ignore List
Restore Deleted
Members Page

The third tab across the top is Live Guard. This page also has a set of its own tabs on the left side. The first of these tabs is the Internet Guards. This tab lists several built in guards which work continuously to protect your computer. You can see a description of each guard at the bottom of the screen. You can also turn each guard on and off with the buttons that are below the description. These particular guards are for protecting your internet experience. The next tab is System Guard. This tab does exactly the same thing as the Internet Guard except the guards on this one are for protecting your system. The next tab is the Application Guard. Again, this is just like the other two except this one guards the programs that are installed on your computer. The Block Events tab shows all the programs that you have blocked. The All Events tab shows all the events that have occurred. The Blocked Programs tab will stop any program in the list from running.

Internet Guards
System Guards
Application Guards
Blocked Events
All Events
Blocked Programs

The last tab across the top is the Settings tab. This is were you can configure some things about SpyEraser. The first set of items you can configure in the General tab are some startup options. Things like auto start when the computer starts, and show splash screen when SpyEraser starts. You can also configure if any alerts are displayed when a program is blocked or allowed. The next tab is Security Restrictions. Here you can actually disable certain programs and prevent them from running. Some of these programs include: Registry Editor, Control Panel, and Task Manager.

General
Security Restrictions

Performance

Using SpyEraser is very easy to do; most of it is actually automatic. Once it is installed and setup SpyEraser runs in the background monitoring your computer for problems. Sometimes you will see a little popup letting you know that a program has been blocked or allowed to pass. Scanning my hard drive did not take long, it took about 5 minutes and I have a very large hard drive. SpyEraser also takes about 40 MB of ram while it is running.

Once you have scanned your hard drive you are presented with a list of programs and files that SpyEraser thinks are bad. SpyEraser will automatically rank the programs and files and choose an action that it thinks is appropriate. You then can accept the action that the program has chosen or you can change it. You have several options at this point. The options you can choose are Ignore, Ignore Always, Quarantine, and Remove. Below the list of programs is a checkbox labeled Remove All Threats. When you select this box it will automatically change all the actions to Remove. Below that you can choose to create a restore point and then click the Clean System button and start the process of clearing the system of spyware.

Scan Completed
Scan Results Expanded
Fix Confirm

During all my testing I never once had any trouble with SpyEraser messing up my computer or corrupting my registry.

Warranty and Support

Uniblue offers support for SpyEraser through the website. There are places where you can submit questions and where you can read frequently asked questions.

Conclusion

SpyEraser is really great to use and does a good job. It is also not very expensive and only costs $29.95. I can recommend this to you with confidence, knowing that if you do get it then it, will perform very well.

4 Responses to Review: Uniblue SpyEraser

  1. ktr

    I bought Spyeraser and however professional it looks, its performance is totally poor. I had a total of 26 adware infections at the time it was assuring me I was safe….I only joined this forum to warn u off this product guys. And I hope u do the same if u happen to buy an equally horrible product…

  2. Ryan McLaughlin

    Thank you for your comments, but your comments are a bit harsh, especially since you don’t provide any proof. I hope you wil be willing to provide more information about your findings.

    You said that Spyeraser did not find 26 AdWare, I assume you used another program to find them. What program did you use? and which Adware did Spyeraser not find? If you can provide this information then we can prove your assertions and possibly help make Spyeraser better.

  3. ktr

    It’s amazing guys how an ordinary person like me used the product and quickly found out how poor it is, while a “review” done by specialized people rates it perfect.
    But to answer your questions, I used SpywareDoctor which found a bunch of spyware not previously detected and some of them where high-risk. I do not wish to promote their product and I wouldnt have mentioned them if you hadnt asked.
    As for the exact spyware not found, I do not remember them, I only remember the count, which stroke me on the head. But if you really want “to make it better”, it’s your job to find out what is detected and what is not.

  4. Ryan McLaughlin

    Thank you for that information. I downloaded a trial version of that software and tested it against several other spyware programs. I will attach a screen shot below so you can see my results. It looks like Spyware Doctor found the most spyware. Spybot found two threats and both Windows Defender and SpyEraser did not find anything. As you can see I did not have any High priority spyware so I don’t know how they would differ. My recommendation is to download a trial of any program you are considering buying and see works best in your situation.

    By the way, 8.2 out of 10 is far from perfect.

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