Should You Buy Ad-Aware Spyware Remover?

Ad-aware is the best-known adware and spyware removal program out there. Lavasoft has been providing Ad-Aware to eliminate malware and spyware since before most people knew it existed. Indeed, many people first learned about malware and the damage that it can do through Ad-Aware.

This software is now 10 years old. Version 8.0 has now been introduced, following many upgrades and improvements through the years. So, how well is it faring after being in existence for ten years?

The reviews are somewhat mixed. Many people consider the good reputation of Ad-Aware to be well deserved. They distinguish between the free version, which leaves the user somewhat confused, and the paid version. In the latter, there you have been many improvements like faster startup and scanning.

The anniversary version is quite good and is considered to be an improvement. Unfortunately, the TrackSweep feature cannot be used with Apple Safari and Google Chrome browsers, which is a problem for some. Because this particular feature deletes your web history, some people find this unsatisfactory. You may want to buy the Ad-Aware Pro version since the free program doesn’t include real-time registry protection or heuristic detection.

Some professional reviewers hold this opinion, but do amateur users like you agree? These assessments are significantly more diverse. On the one hand you have people who say that Ad-Aware is the only program that found a multitude of spyware on their computers, and completely cleaned it off. However, some people ran such programs as Spybot after using Ad-Aware multiple times and they still had malware. This is clearly a reflection of the fact that no one program ever finds and eliminates everything, since you read reviews saying exactly the same thing about pretty much every anti-spyware program that exists.

However, most of the negative reviews pertain to the free version, which is considerably different from the Pro version. For many, the free version isn’t worth using because it doesn’t provide an adequate level of protection. At times, the software was inadequate in removing malware that was guaranteed to be removed, with tech support being of no assistance. Also, no refund was given after the program failed. One user finally had to downgrade back to the previous version to use it at all, and the most recent version of the software actually froze the person’s computer in one or two cases.

Most sites allow users to grade on a scale of 1-5 stars, and those with numerous responses give Ad-Aware three and a half to four stars. What this seems to imply is that while the tenth anniversary version of Ad-Aware may not be the absolute best, it’s still pretty good, and worth looking into if you’re shopping around.

You need an effective spyware removal tool in order to protect your computer and your personal data from hackers and thieves. Fortunately, there are a number of freeware spyware remover tools available which you can get at any number of sites that have freeware spyware removal software.