A few days ago...
DSLR Thread: ASW Vendors in La-La Land
Lavasoft, makers of Ad-Aware spyware removal utility, removed definitions for WhenU, an extremely common piece of Adware. WhenU is bundled with Bearshare, playminigolf, and many other adware apps.
In its update notes Lavasoft made no mention of the removal of these signatures.
In addition to WhenU, Ad-Aware seems to be not detecting other adwares such as PurityScan, MyWay, NewtonKnows, and Cydoor--another very common adware engine, included with many P2P applications (notably eXeem).
Even more daming, a thread on this subject started on Lavasoft's support forums by noted spyware researcher Eric Howes was "accidentally" deleted.
Posted by a Lavasoft Rep:
Quote:
Hello to all participating in this thread,
First I will reemphasize the fact that we do not and will not have any collaboration with any companies that are or may be in our data base nor with those currently under research. In addition we do not and will not have collaborations with those who we have been removed from detection for obvious ethical, company, and yes, even personal commitment considerations.
We established our Threat Assessment Chart Inclusion procedure long before it was publicly posted and stand by its relevance of being based on behavior and intent rather than nebulous definitions or on suspicions.
Yes, we have removed WhenU (currently) and Myway (Previously) because they failed to meet our inclusion procedure threshold of 3 points or higher. For a complete description of the TAC please see the following link:
http://www.lavasoftnews.com/ms/tac_main.shtml
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(See dslr thread linked above for full post)
For XP users, Microsoft Antispyware is available as freeware. Microsoft Antispyware is basically rebranded Giant Antispyware, the highest scoring anti-spyware app in exhaustive tests conducted by Eric Howes.
For the rest of us wondering who to turn to, there's still Patrick Kolla's Spybot Search & Destroy (
http://security.kolla.de), Webroot's Spy Sweeper (~$26,
http://www.webroot.com/), and McAfee Anti-Spyware, which has gotten good reviews so far.