Hands-on Review: Webroot Spy Sweeper with AntiVirus

A couple of readers have recently asked me for an opinion on Spy Sweeper (aka SpySweeper), a venerable product from Webroot that's evolved quite a bit from some pretty rocky beginnings. But lately the software seems to have improved quite a bit, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to give the application another go.

The version I tested was the $40 Spy Sweeper with AntiVirus, which combines spyware protection with standard antivirus scanning. Installation was relatively painless, and updates were downloaded automatically during the install process.

Novice users put off by some of the more cryptic anti-spyware tools will probably have little trouble with Spy Sweeper. Running on-demand scans is simple, and scheduling regular runs is not much more difficult. In a test run on a desktop the software found 19 danger items, all in line with other scanners that I regularly use (and it uncovered one specific item that the others had not). My only real complaint: The scan took forever, well over an hour to search through 160,000 items, excessive considering this was a fast dual-core machine running the test.

Let's look at some other measures of the quality of the security Spy Sweeper offers: PC World ranked Spy Sweeper as its number one spyware detector (based on an independent lab's tests). Virus.gr does not include the product in its current rankings, but the antivirus portion of the app is provided by Sophos, which received a very poor rating of 69.48% by Virus.gr. That's not a great sign, so you should strongly consider running an additional antivirus app alongside Spy Sweeper if you use it.

Overall impressions: I like the interface, the program is relatively stable (I've had one crash while using it actively, though I can't definitively pin the blame on Spy Sweeper), and I'm perfectly happy with the results so far. Of course, the one drawback here is that it isn't free like a few other anti-spyware applications, but $40 for both virus and spyware protection isn't a bad deal (especially if the virus side of things is enhanced in the near future). The price includes a subscription for one year of updates. Without the antivirus portion it's $30.

As always, I note that even the best anti-spyware applications are not perfect. In fact, they're usually far from it. If you suspect you have a spyware problem, download multiple applications and run them one after another, because every application tends to find something different. It's the only way to make sure you get rid of all those nasty spyware critters.