One of the most annoying spyware is adware. Adware is a program designed for advertising. Advertising thought pop-ups, advertisement, etc. It often contains parasites. Ad-Aware from Lavasoft is one of the best adware “killerâ€. It also detects and deletes spyware, malware, toolbars, hijackers, etc. It is one of the most popular software.
Advantages:
- Userfriendly: easy to install and to use;
- Provides very good pop-up blocker;
- It is able to find up to 30,122 components;
- Provides founded spyware description;
- Provides real time monitoring;
- Alerts about attempts to download spyware or adware;
- Available ActiveX blocking;
- Scans downloads that you want to download;
- You are able to scan all computer at a time or devices or files appart;
- You are able to restore files that you have quarantined or deleted;
- Fast and effective search of less known spywares;
- Provides help and support services;
Apart from the great number of advantages, it has some disadvantages:
- It costs more then other anti-spyware software which provides better security and services ($41.91 annual price).
- No automatic updates. You have to update it regularly yourself.
- No schedule scans.
- Poor technical support.
- Lack of useful information in help support.
- Does not detect keyloggers.
- Sometimes it supports pop-ups: even if you don't surf on Internet it shows some pop-ups.
- Real time blocking is not very effective. Sometimes it asks to install spyware if you want to get rid of it and afterwards it doesn't find it.
Although Ad-Aware is very popular and well known but it's not the best from the all anti-spyware programs. And also it costs more than better one's. It's effective against pop-ups, but if you want only a pop-up blocker don't buy Ad-Aware, because there are single pop-up blockers that does better work. Ad-Aware is good in most cases, and especially in some versions, like The Professional edition, which provides command-line and log-file support. All in all there are plenty of users that are pleased with Ad-Aware's performance.