Free Spyware / Adware / Trojans / Hijackers Detection, Prevention, Removal

Prevent spyware, adware, trojans and hijackers from infecting your system


Free Spyware/Adware/Trojans/Hijackers/Dialers/Keyloggers Detection, Prevention, Removal

If you ever had programs unexpectedly installing on your system, popping up advertisements, saying voice advertisements or playing music, changing (hijacking) your home page (or start page), modifying your search results, displaying search results when you hit a 404 file not found page, dialing out, and so on, your system has probably been compromised by some spyware, adware, trojan, hijacker or dialer.

Loosely speaking, when this page refers to spyware, it means some program that has been installed on your system that reports something back to the software writer (or website that installed it) - whether it be websites you visit or your activities on the computer or the like. Adware means a program that displays advertisements on your computer; and I don't mean the usual advertisements you see on web pages that you visit: adware pop-up advertising windows (or in some cases, say some voice message) on your system are not generated by the websites you happen to visit. Dialers are programs that get installed on your system and try to dial up to some telephone line somewhere, sometimes incurring you expensive phone bills. Keyloggers record the keystrokes you type on your computer (some are more sophisticated in capturing screen shots, etc), and either log them or report them to the person who installed them.

This page lists some sites and software that you can use to detect such spyware, adware, trojans, hijackers, dialers, keyloggers and what-have-you on your computer. Some of them will also remove them, and others when installed and run will prevent some of these nasties from being installed in the first place.

Note that this page does not list commercial spyware/adware cleaners like Acronis Privacy Expert Suite (removes rootkits and other malware, has a pop-up blocker, cleans out traces of your surfing, has a file shredder and disk wiping utility, etc), and Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal (which apart from its antivirus capabilities, also cleans anti-malware like spyware, trojans, etc).

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Disclaimer

The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book, document or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.

IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ:

If you find that the links to the free software below go to pages which require you to pay money to get software, it means that your computer is badly infested with spyware and adware. You can no longer trust any link you see in your browser. The malware or spyware loaded in your computer has modified the addresses of every page you visit so that you are redirected to the spyware site. You may have to revisit this page from a clean computer to get the real software that is listed on this page.

After you clean your computer, you should use a safer browser like Firefox or Opera. ( )

Free Spyware and Browser Hijacking Prevention

SpywareBlaster

This nifty program prevents spyware ActiveX controls from being installed on your computer by adjusting your system so that these malicious controls are prevented from being installed or run. For the technically inclined, it sets the "kill bit" for these controls, causing IE to refuse to run them. It also blocks cookies from certain websites or companies that are known to use these cookies to track a user's surfing habits.

SpywareGuard

SpywareGuard runs behind the scenes to block spyware from being downloaded or run on your computer. It also has the ability to prevent browser hijacking (whether it is your start page or your ability to search using a search engine or otherwise).

Free Spyware, Adware, Trojan, Hijacking, Keyloggers Detection and Removal

AVG Anti-Spyware (Free Version)

AVG Anti-Spyware (formerly Ewido Anti-Spyware) is a trojan scanner that removes trojans, backdoors, worms, keyloggers, dialers and other spyware. It requires Windows 2000 and XP. The free version does not run in the background to protect your system, but you can use it to do a manual scan for malware. To get background scanning along with antivirus protection, you will need their commercial AVG Antivirus software, which in spite of its name, scans for spyware and other malware as well.

Comodo BOClean AntiMalware

BOClean is a memory resident program that detects a wide variety of malware including trojan horses, spyware, keyloggers, pseudo-rootkits, hijackers, adware, annoyware, email relays, spam proxies, spam relays, scam downloads, spam bots, etc. The program terminates the malware before they can execute on your machine. It requires Windows 2000 or XP.

a2 Free

a2 Free is an anti-trojan, anti-malware, anti-dialer and anti-worm scanning software. You use it to manually scan your system for malicious software like trojans, dialers, worms, backdoors, denial of service (DOS) tools, keyloggers, sniffers, and the like. It does a scan of processes in memory and the programs stored on your hard disk.

Abtrusion Protector Personal Edition

Abtrusion Protector tracks the software that you have installed, and only allows those software to run. If some other software (eg, a trojan) somehow creeps into your system (eg, via email attachments), Abtrusion Protector will not allow it to run (unless you give permission). As such, it serves as a complement to your existing antivirus and anti-trojan programs.

Spybot Search and Destroy (Spybot S & D)

One of the best spyware detection and removal utilities is actually free. It can detect and remove spyware, adware, trojans, hijackers, dialers, malware, keyloggers and numerous other nuisances. It runs under Windows.

Ad-aware 2007 Free Edition

Adaware detects and removes spyware, adware, trojans, hijackers, dialers, malware, keyloggers, etc. The Free Edition is free for non-commercial use only and has a number of limitations. If you need it to detect threats in real-time, you might want to check out the commercial Ad-Aware 2007 Plus instead.

and.doxdesk - Find Unsolicited Commercial Software

and.doxdesk is a site that provides free online parasite scanning for your computer. It detects adware, spyware, scumware, homepage hijackers, dialers (they call it "diallers"), etc.

HiJackThis! and CoolWebShredder

HiJackThis! is a manual utility that can help you detect and remove spyware on your system. Unlike some of the other tools listed on this page, this tool requires you to have some knowledge of what you're looking for, the programs required in your system for it to function properly, and what to remove. It is often a tool that spyware removal experts will ask you to run so that they can diagnose the problem on your system.

CoolWebShredder removes a piece of spyware (or whatever) called CoolWebSearch (also known as CoolwwwSearch, YouFindAll, White-Pages.ws, etc). It is regularly updated to remove the new versions of this hijacker (since new versions of the CoolWebSearch appear to be released frequently to circumvent the spyware/trojan/hijacker removal tools).

Microsoft Windows Defender

Microsoft Windows Defender for Windows XP and 2003 is currently available from Microsoft free of charge, subject to their verifying that your computer is running a legal version of XP.

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