Most people I meet who have found malware on their computer regale me with a cat-and-mouse story of the fight and the painstaking steps they had to take to remove it.
When it comes to battling today's adware and spyware, the plot shouldn't have so many twists and turns. I've got an easier answer.
In the old days, most malware programs were harmless - annoying, yes, but ultimately benign. They were mainly ways for tech-headed teens to show they could do something neat.
Their creations would replicate files, modify the computer in a funny way, or pull a goofy prank - maybe display a dramatic but fake warning. Only a small percentage of viruses or worms did something intentionally harmful.
Nowadays, 99 percent of malware is actually crimeware designed to hurt you financially. Today's malware exists to steal your money, whether it be through your identity, passwords, data, or bank account.
If you discover that a malware program is active on your computer, you don't want to take any chances. Even if your antivirus program tells you it is simple adware, don't take any chances. Go to full removal.
Adware removal programs are easy to find. But finding one that is truly free, provides constant updates and is user-friendly is really difficult.
On top of that, you should be very cautious when you choose a website from which to download a free spyware removal software, since there are a lot of dishonest sites offering bogus adware removal programs which, in fact, turn out to be malware themselves.
These phony programs are promoted vigorously on the Internet, and many computer users are scammed into installing what they think is a protective and safe program.
We’ve thoroughly tested dozens of malware removal programs and here’s what we found.
We ran each program on several PCs in which we had already "planted" different spyware infections... so we could find out exactly which spyware removal programs were able to remove the infections cleanly and thoroughly on different operating systems.
Our results were quite surprising. We found that many of these programs simply did not do the job. Over and over again we saw these so-called malware removal products leave bits and pieces - and in some cases almost all of the malware on our different systems.
Although most of the programs we tested did not live up to our expectations, we did manage to find a few that truly stood out. Spyware Cease removed all of the malware on all of our systems. This software managed to eradicate all forms of spyware infections. It improved PC performance by 16.5% on our test computer and eliminated 100% of the infections we "planted" in our tests.
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