Worms in My Free Lunch: Ad-Aware to the Rescue!
Written: Feb 17 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: a fast and furious scouring pad for your hard drive; knowledge is power!
Cons: could cripple some freeware without your knowledge; no undo feature
The Bottom Line: If you've ever used shareware, this room might be bugged! Get rid of the spies on your hard drive NOW with Ad-Aware. It's easier to use than you think!
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| unheimlich's Full Review: AD-Aware |
There's no such thing as a free lunch. Even when it comes to one of the internet's greatest inventions: freeware.
Many free shareware programs are planting "bugs" on your hardware to track your web habits, in exchange for your "free" use of their shareware. The concept is called "adware" and it is a way for shareware vendors to guarantee that they make some profit for releasing their efforts to the world via the internet. Adware plants bugs on your hard drive which enable "secret" conversations between the shareware and some distant internet server, who trade information in the background when you're logged on. Some of these bugs that are installed on your hard drive are innocuous and don't do much besides perpetually keep a banner ad in view while you use the program. Such advertisements are downloaded behind the scenes when you surf the web and then are "planted" in your shareware program. Other advertiser's bugs are more sneaky and are probably invading your privacy on some level. The worst are "spyware" programs -- little bugs that are planted into your program and you aren't even told about it. Sometimes even a web page can install spyware using Java programming, and you could be none the wiser (ever heard of "comet cursor"?).
You might not be interested in these advertisers and information collectors, but they are definitely interested in you. They're piggybacking snoop software onto freeware to generate demographic information, based on the web pages you visit, the registration info you complete in the program, the objects you click on, and who knows what else!
As a software consumer, you're usually given two options: you can either use the shareware for free and put up with the ads, or pay the software vendor for the product to quell the ads. Although it might feel like highway robbery, it's a fair trade actually, since many users sadly never pay for their shareware on the old honor system. We used to live in a culture where privacy was assured and infringement rare. Nowadays, it's the reverse. You have to work hard to protect it -- and sometimes pay for it, too.
Ad-Aware -- a small freeware program from the generous programmers at Lavasoft (www.lavasoft.de) -- is a program entirely designed to remove these spyware "bugs" from your system. It's a snap to use and functions much like a virus scanner. After a quick and easy installation routine, you run the program and are struck by its clean and simple interface. You click on a simple button on the bottom of the screen and it launches into a VERY FAST search of your hard disk for hidden advertisements in the form of files, folders, cookies, and even Windows' registry entries. When I first ran the program, my 13 Gigabyte, heavily partitioned hard disk was scoured in about a minute and half. Afterwards, I was shocked by the report that popped up: I had a TON of hidden advertisement engines on my system! Well, thirty-nine of them anyway...and that's plenty for a privacy conscious internet surfer like me. Ad-Aware easily let me save a log of these hidden treasures for future reference, and then I opened a very sensible and easy-to-understand dialogue box which allowed me to select which of the nasty robots I wanted the program to automatically remove by clicking on check boxes. Instead, I right-clicked and found a "check all" selection which checked each item in the list for me in a jiff. One click later, they were chewed up and spit out into the recycle bin.
Purging can be a painful process, but ultimately it's pleasurable. I sort of wanted to scrub my nasty hard drive again, but I couldn't: I was already cured. Darn.
I opened up the log I saved and studied it to see what I had really done. I had FINALLY gotten rid of "comet cursor" -- a resident program that can download tiny pictures onto your hard drive which trade your "arrow" pointer for some other image (some web designers program this "feature" into their pages using Javascript and you can't get rid of them!). I also found that virtually every type of spyware known to man had been secreted on my system by programs I'd long ago demo'd and deleted -- like Imesh, a peer-to-peer software sharing, Napster clone, which had installed the "Timesink" robot. And as I had read in another review on Epinions, Net Vampire had indeed bled my privacy reserve dry by puncturing my internet "backchannel" without my knowledge, sending personal info out across the webwires to demographers unknown. Ad-Aware put a stake through that puppy's heart, alright. Now the program doesn't work. But that's okay: I don't want spyware on my system and I'm not willing to trade my privacy for a free piece of software. (If I were, Ad-Aware wouldn't let me "reinstall" the spyware...but I could reinstall the Net Vampire freeware program and easily deselect the detected spyware when given the chance...).
I trust Ad-Aware to keep me updated in the future, too, as dastardly new spyware agents are released onto the net. Living up to its virus checker sense of identity, Ad-Aware also regularly posts "definition" files on their website, so you can update your program regularly and check for the latest hidden untreasures (installing the updates is as simple as copying a file into the ad-aware directory). They also offer a program called Ad-Watch which can sit in your system tray and keep guard for any new spyware installations, catching them in the act. (I believe Ad-Watch comes with the "plus" version of Ad-Aware, which you can get by paying a teensy fee). I recommend that all users browse around in Ad-Aware's generous help file, too, which keeps a good list of privacy-related websites, like links to Steve Gibson's "Opt Out" pages (grc.com), where I found out more than I ever dreamed possible about spyware: such as the fact that many programs are keeping track of every site I visit, and that one senator has delivered a "spyware privacy" bill to congress.
If Ad-Aware has any problems, they are minor compared to the great benefits you'll garner (for free!) in protecting your privacy. But there are a few: for example, you can't easily tell who or what is really responsible for planting the spyware files, cookies, or registry entries. So if you purge these items blindly, you might cripple a program you have come to depend upon, and won't realize it until you stumble upon an error message when you least anticipated. The program should incorporate an "undo" feature somehow...but it doesn't. It also won't remove the ads and leave the "adware" intact to run without them (because it's illegal to do so, believe it or not). But as I said, these minor drawbacks are worth the price of the program (free!).
If you like Ad-Aware, you should also try a similar free program by a different programmer, called "Ad-Terminator": Ad-Terminator is a smart little "host" file that you put into your windows' directory. It automatically blocks sneaky advertisements from appearing in webpages and protects you from "click-through" snooping scripts. It also speeds up the loading of a page, because you don't have to wait for the ads to load...instead, a tiny clear graphic is downloaded from ad-terminator's own server in its place. A smart idea! Get it at: www.ledgerlabs.com/adterminator. (I also recommend cookie blocking software, by people like www.webwasher.com). Coupled together, these two "ad" blocking technologies will protect your privacy and help purge your system of dirty rotten scoundrels who are profiteering off of your identity.
Free programs are great, but not if they cost you your real freedom in the process. Protect yourself already!
-- unheimlich, 2/01
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
unheimlich
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Location: USA
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Tattooed Everything.
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