Protecting Against Spyware

I’ve been slacking in the spyware defense department, mainly because Firefox had been crashing constantly so I was using Google Chrome temporarily instead. However, I just noticed in the recent update of Firefox that it hasn’t crashed yet so I am hopeful they fixed the problem.

In addition to that my motherboard is going up so I’d been waiting to replace that so I could actually backup my computer (right now any external devices plugged into it make it crash, so no external hd hookup for me).

Anyway, a classic free spyware tool for me has always been Spybot. I used Lavasofts Ad-aware back in the day before it started to suck. I’ve tried another one today called Spyware Blaster that is also free, though they have a pay for version that provides automatic updates. But I’m fine with doing manual updates to save money. So far Spyware Blaster seems to be fairly nice.

I’m hesitant about trying Microsofts Defender because I just never like anything from Microsoft.

To be honest, the best defense I’ve seen against spyware is just using Firefox with their NoScript plugin. It just blocks every script on every website except those you allow.

As far as paid tools like ZoneAlarm, I can’t say I know anything about them. I usually like to stick to free or opensource (preferred) programs.

Not all spyware programs are good programs. Some are down right malicious. But there are two sites that regularly update lists of bogus or malicious programs that claim to be spyware programs.
Spyware Warrior and StopBadWare.org.