Entered CNET Catalog: 06/28/2006
SKU: CNETGRISOFTEWIDOANTISPYWARE4
Manufacturer: AVG Technologies USA, Inc.
Product summary
The good: Grisoft Ewido Anti-Spyware 4 is easy to use, offers free and paid versions in addition to a online removal service, includes a file shredder, and its real-time scanner doesn't conflict with antivirus software running on your machine.
The bad: Grisoft Ewido Anti-Spyware 4 offers perhaps too much granularity in its results, making it appear to identifiy and remove more than 100 items, while other scanners tend to group these into families of spyware instead.
The bottom line: Grisoft Ewido Anti-Spyware is very good at identifying and removing spyware from your PC. We recommend trying the online or free edition for starters.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Rating: 7.3
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 07/28/2006
We found the interface in Ewido Anti-Spyware 4 to be clean and very easy to use; the use of white space is balanced throughout. Icons across the top access various tools, while tabs within the specific tool pages access different levels of configuration.
We like the file shredder included within both editions of Ewido; by overwriting the deleted files with numerous layers of 1s and 0s, a file shredder ensures that the deleted spyware has been thoroughly removed from your system. Both versions also include free e-mail support and the ability to create your own exceptions. The paid version also includes a real-time protection, an active memory scanner, automatic online updates, and a scheduler to allow you to run antispyware scans after hours.
In informal testing, we were dazzled by the Ewido results. To create a hazardous Internet experience, we downloaded the peer-to-peer application Kazaa onto a Windows XP SP2 machine, then quickly performed our scan. Ewido Anti-Spyware 4 returned an amazing number of results, amazing since we ran Webroot Spy Sweeper 5 simultaneously against the same Windows XP machine, and it generated only eight results. The difference, of course, falls within the categorization of threats; Webroot tends to group more of the threats into families and Ewido included more cookies. Still, Ewido performed very well. Stay tuned for more detailed performance testing from CNET in the fall.
Overall we say give Grisoft Ewido Anti-Spyware 4 a try, especially the free edition.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5
User Rating: 
9/10
I was about to toss my computer...
Pros: Easy , thorough and free!!
Cons: Nothing yet!!
User Rating: 
8/10
excellent product
Pros: full search easy to use
Cons: fails to group items
User Rating: 9/10
Well here I go again.......
Pros: This is a really good product...
Cons: None that I have found to date....
ComcastToolbar\uninstall.exe -> Adware.VMN
Now I am finally free.... Thanks Ewido.
User Rating: 
7/10
the free version is very good
Pros: better stand alone scanner than ad-aware
Cons: not in the class of Spy Sweeper
Ewido's active protection is not in the class of Spy Sweeper. I have had both products and actually had them running at the same time. Spy Sweeper always alerts to BHO installations or other system changes while Ewido doesn't. Ewido's real value comes in its ability to detect malware on your computer. It detects trojans, spyware, pretty much everything except key loggers and rootkits. It has detected malware completely missed by some of the paid programs I have used (Spy Sweeper and Counter Spy).
This product is especially useful if you run mozilla/firefox browser. I had ad-aware, spybot, etc. while running firefox and they hardly turned up any spyware found. I then downloaded and scanned with Ewido and it was amazing how much the other spyware products missed. There is supposed to be certain spyware that specific for mozilla/firefox and Ewido seems to be the only spyware program that can find it.
Another thing, once the trial period ends the active protection stops. But the guard.exe still runs in the background even though it is not actually protecting anything. You can google up a way to disable this waste of resources by disabling it in administrative tools. It will not effect ewido unless you choose to reactive the guard by purchasing the product.
I gave this product a rating of 7 because we are supposed to rate the paid program. It's active protection does not merit a higher score than that. But if we were rating free spyware/malware programs I would have given this product a 9. It is better than Ad-Aware and well ahead of Spybot S&D.
If you are in need of active protection and short on revenue to shell out on a program like Spy Sweeper I suggest you try the free Windows Defender (or whatever it is called now) or Spybot with tea-timer. They both provide a limited amount of active protection although they are well behind Spy Sweeper. But you would also want to (1) add a small program like Regprot with either WD or SPybot and (2) download F-Secure's blacklight rootkit detector to run every so often. Both Regprot and Blacklight are small programs that stay on your desktop.
User Rating: 8/10
Good Spyware
Pros: Good, Easy and Friendly user
Cons: Not free after 30 days
