Grisoft Ewido Anti-Spyware 4

Grisoft, maker of the popular antivirus application AVG, has released its first antispyware application, Grisoft Ewido Anti-Spyware 4. Grisoft purchased established antispyware vendor Ewido Networks in April 2006 and now offers a completely updated version of this antispyware product, available in free and paid editions. Better yet, there's an online scanner that, unlike the online scanners from PC Tools Spyware Doctor and Webroot Spy Sweeper , will actually clean and remove active malware from your system. You can run Ewido Anti-Spyware 4 alongside other security software without conflict; in fact, Ewido is also compatible with a number of popular antivirus applications. For an inside look, see our Grisoft Ewido Anti-Spyware 4 slide show.

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.