RSSSpybot Search & Destroy competitors are trying to force its removal
By Scott M. Fulton, III, Nate Mook and Angela Gunn | Published April 7, 2009, 12:15 PM
For years, Spybot Search & Destroy has been one of Fileforum's single most installed pieces of software, with nearly 67 million downloads since 2000 on our sister site alone. It's one of the Web's original anti-spyware packages, independently distributed by Safer Networking Ltd., based in Ireland and developed in Germany.
Despite a user base in the dozens of millions (if not more; Safer Networking doesn't track its users), Spybot S&D hasn't had an easy time establishing itself in the competitive anti-malware field. Because it is freeware (commercial users must purchase licenses), the application is seen as a thorn in the side of larger companies who sell security software with the same functionality.
But now, the principals of Safer Networking are stepping up their rhetoric a bit. Speaking with Betanews last week, the developers of Spybot S&D demonstrated how some of its larger competitors are actively using their anti-virus tools to keep Spybot off customers' systems.
Safer Networking names three manufacturers in particular: Trend Micro, Kaspersky Labs, and McAfee Software. Though their anti-virus products are, Safer Networking says, compatible with Spybot S&D, their setup routines claim a conflict with one of Spybot's optional components: a memory-resident live anti-malware signature checker called TeaTimer. Even if TeaTimer is not active, the setups first ask or even require the user to uninstall Spybot before proceeding.
Safer Networking says that Symantec used to also tell its Norton AntiVirus users to uninstall Spybot S&D, but ceased the practice a couple years ago after pressure from the company and its users.
"We are not happy with the new marketing strategy that softwares like McAfee use to kick competitors out of the business," wrote one company representative on Safer Networking's forums, in response to yet another Spybot customer's call for help last January.
Safer Networking added a new feature in its latest 1.6.2 release that enables a user to tell the company why he or she is uninstalling Spybot S&D. The company has been receiving on average 1,700 uninstall notices each week from 1.6.2 alone, with the majority coming from Kaspersky users. [March 9 to March 15, 2009 uninstall figures: 931 because of Kaspersky, 349 because of Trend Micro, 551 because of McAfee.]
In Betanews tests, we were able to recreate one of the incompatibilities claimed by Safer Networking's competitors. While some users of McAfee VirusScan reported trouble installing it on systems where Spybot S&D already resides, others who did run both programs experienced access violations later on regarding the TeaTimer program. On a physical (not virtual) Windows Vista-based machine, we received the same access violation errors reported by others, after about two hours of continuous run time.
It might not be all that unusual or even shocking that multiple anti-malware products that may use similar system resources as one another, will conflict with one another. But as a McAfee representative confirmed for Betanews, it is indeed possible for Spybot S&D and McAfee products to co-exist with the right configuration.
"Spybot Search and Destroy's Immunize feature and McAfee's SystemGuards feature do not work well with each other," writes McAfee's Kim Eichorn. "Hence, we do not recommend running Spybot Search and Destroy and McAfee consumer security suites at the same time. When the Spybot Immunize feature runs, it causes McAfee's SystemGuards to use significant CPU resources on the PC for an extended period of time. Additionally, the Spybot Immunize feature takes significantly more time to enable/disable when McAfee SystemGuards are running."
Eichorn suggests that the user disable either Spybot S&D or McAfee SystemGuards; but in the event he should prefer to run both, he should disable and uninstall Spybot completely before installing McAfee, and then re-install later.
"If the user wants to install and run both programs, s/he should uninstall Spybot, then install McAfee, then re-install Spybot. The user can then open McAfee and turn off SystemGuards," wrote Eichorn. "Note that McAfee will initially flag this as a problem. By returning to the main screen, the user can click a link to ignore this. After ignoring it, McAfee will no longer flag this problem."
"Spybot - Search & Destroy is far more than just the immunization feature - its main part is the on-demand malware scanner," Safer Networking founder Patrick Kolla told Betanews in response to McAfee's assertion.
"Forcing the uninstallation of the whole product because of incompatibilities of a minor part is a little pitiable for us. But the biggest point is that it makes a safe and comfortable online experience on a level offered by Spybot - Search & Destroy impossible," Kolla added. "As long as McAfee is not able to provide users the same amount of security, we kindly ask them to stop impairing the users' control over their system security."
In the case of Kaspersky Labs, some Spybot S&D customers have reported that it appears to them Kaspersky's setup routine actually deletes Spybot S&D, or parts of it, without giving acknowledgment or asking permission.
While Kaspersky would not confirm for us that its setup goes so far as to delete Spybot S&D, its vice president for research and development, Nikolay Grebennikov, confirmed for Betanews that it does indeed detect Spybot, and that the two companies' products have had conflicts...but that's all behind them now.
"Earlier versions of Spybot Search & Destroy were incompatible with our products and we received complaints on a number of occasions from users having compatibility problems. Because we value the interests of our customers above all else, we had no choice but to detect Spybot Search & Destroy as being incompatible with our products," Grebennikov told Betanews. "Current evidence suggests that there are no longer any compatibility problems between our products and the latest versions of Spybot Search & Destroy, and following on from a detailed study of the issue we are ready to remove the detection of this application in future versions of our products."
Pleased with Kaspersky's move, Safer Networking's Kolla told Betanews, "We're happy to hear that the issue seems to be resolved, and would appreciate to see a copy of that detailed study. In the future we would be very glad if Kaspersky would respect our combined users' choice to have their systems protected by both software."
Next: Trend Micro brands Spybot "incompatible"...
I use spybot search & destroy and find it to be a very good product indeed, if not one of the best. I refuse to use McAfee, Norton or Trand due to their nasty business practices and there slow invasive software.
Anyway, as I said, spybot is one of the best. All should use it. Get rid of McAfee, Norton and Trend and do yourself a favor and get good software.
Score: 1
|Spybot S&D has a Hint of the Day that goes:
Caution! Products from Kaspersky, McAfee and Trend Micro might be regarded as malware!
According to the the (sic) antispyware coalition's definition, programs such as Kaspersky, McAfee and Trend Micro might be considered Spyware and/or PUPS. which it defines as: "Technologies [...] implemented in ways that impair user control over [...] Material changes that affect their [...] system security,"
Score: 1
|Ha.
As an IT technician I have gone the other way and taken the road of simply opting out of installing McAfee when it sees a conflict. Not only for spybot but for any conflict for that matter.
There ARE better Antivirus alternative lets not be blind. McAfee is notorious in embedding itself and sprawling files and registry values like wildfire in any pc it is loaded on. Anyway lets not get started on that.
Take the safe road not the uneducated optional one. Stick with what works and build around it.
The word is spreading your going down McAfee.
Trend Micro and Kaspersky Labs your on my little blacklist also.
Score: 4
|Spybot Search & Destroy should do the same! They should uninstall all that crap from McAfee, Trend Micro, Symantec (what a joke!) before install! And recommend it's users to switch to some of the quality free AV softwares like Anti-Vir, AVG, Avast!
Score: 2
|Why is everyone installing all of this garbage anyway? The best antivirus package available is YOU! Be smart, make sure your copy of windows has the latest patches and run MalwareBytes occasionally. These packages are bloatware and nothing more. The latest viruses can take days to be propagated via updates... by then you might already have it. Do you walk around outside with a bullet proof vest on? The vest would keep you safe against some things but not all.
I stumbled across one of those ridiculous sites which supposedly scans your system and tells you that you're infected. Obviously it's a scam (albeit a good one). I downloaded the program ... antivirus 2009 and uploaded it to http://www.virustotal.com. This site tests a file against a whole pile of antivirus programs. Only 34% of them realized this was a virus. 34%! Is that the state of antivirus today? Garbage... Stop believing the scare tactics and be responsible online. No software will allow you to be the opposite.
Score: 0
|Spybot free was fine here until Tea Timer became resident (or so it appeared), then I started getting all sorts of weird behavior. Taking it out of start up immediately solved the problem. I've since gotten by very well with the combo of SuperAntiSpyware Pro, Spyware Blaster free, Comodo PF/BOC and AVG free. Occasional runs of MalwareBytes or one of the others invariably turn up nothing. One can do quite well without Spybot.
Score: 0
|Spybot is an excellent tool. I've used it for years, I'll keep using it and I will always recommend it to anyone. It works perfectly with my Avast (which by the way it's one of the 5 antivirus programs already officially compatible with Windows 7; not that I'm a big fan of Bill's products anyway ;-) ...).
But I also don't use TeaTimer. I stopped using it some time ago. As for the big names here, well, my humble opinion... Kaspersky is way too overrated, Symantec is just a shadow of what it used to be ten years ago and McAfee a bigger shadow of what it used to be fifteen years ago :-)
My personal big THANK YOU to the devs of Spybot for a tool that always helped me and other admins.
Score: 0
|The solution to this "problem" is very easy; simply boycott products from Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky and Trend Micro. End of problem!
I thought competition is a good thing, Safer Networking is providing competition to these guys. If they can't compete then get out of the market; don't distort it.
Regards,
Peter
Score: 0
|i use spybot and clamav on windows have no problem at all my computer runs 24/7. i would never use Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky, Trend Micro always end up viruses malware ect... when ever i used them. they a wast of time and money if u payed for them.. the rest of my computer are linux base and so i use clamav on those too.
Score: 0
|I've always turned off tea-timer anyway. But I only use free anti-virus, either AVG or Avast both have no problem with Spybot. I just use Spybot to scan if I think I have spyware, I don't need 2 things running in the background.
Score: 0
|teatimer, and SS&D's "immunization" features have never worked well for me. The rest of the suite works fine.
For example, by placing thousands of sites in the restricted sites zone in IE, you dramatically can impact system performance in apps like outlook, which use IE's rendering engine, just by typing an html e-mail.
Score: -1
|I'm not convinced there's nefarious play going on in dark back rooms, though that's always fun for folks to speculate about.
Score: -2
|I'll stick with Avira Antivir free personal edition and Spybot S&D. I gave up on the big commercial AV apps when they started doing more than just antivirus - I don't need a firewall when my OS has one built-in. And I especially don't trust any AV app that requires me to delete over 100 registry entries manually in order to uninstall it.
Score: 0
|Many years ago it was the best, now it is not. That Tea Timer brought many a computer to its knees, what a hog. I stopped using it some years back, but was always grateful that in the early days it was available for me, and that it was free. I wish it well, and hope that one day I'll have the confidence to use it again. PC Tools Threatfire is the way to protect your machines now, it like Spybot is also free, and in all the reviews scores highly.
Score: -2
|I have once used this program to remove viruses, however, it didn't do a really great job compared to AVG free or Anti Vir free.
Albert
http://www.mooladays.com
Score: -3
|personally I use Panda AV (not mentioned) I find it has no conflicts w/ SpyBot S&D, which is a good thing for me as i would not use any AV program that did. furthermore Panda's databases haven't been hacked the way some of theose listed in the article have been in recent months. I find SpyBot to provide excellent real time protection against malware of numerous varieties. Stopping the malware that is the front door for a Trojan or other malicious program to infiltrate the users system is an excellent first line of defense. I have SpyBot installed on every machine I've ever worked on and it has solved hundreds of issues not detected by AV software.
Score: 1
|I must say, they helped me personally, got in touch with me, and helped me get rid of a serious virus that other virus programs I pay for, didn't help me...they have a wonderful staff, and they work hard to help the little people, who can't afford virus software...they are doing A GOOD PUBLIC SERVICE FOR NO PAY...HELPING OLDER PEOPLE AND DISABLED PEOPLE...THANK YOU SPYBOT...
Score: 4
|funny,
it is commonly known that trend, mcafee and others have been known to corrupt computer systems, worse than malware. seriously, why would any of these companies beleive that they can get away with selling unreliable software and provide little or no customer service when their costly wares literally crash their customers computer systems?
it is well known among the technical community that these big name software makers create problematic and unreliable programs. perhaps, there is also fraud and mis representation involved as well.
therefore, in spite of the whining these multi million dollar companies make, we will continue to recommended the deinstallation of the above crapware and promote search and destroy because of its reliability and performance and responsiveness to customer inquiries.
for all practical purposes the market place would not miss some of the big name anti viral makers if the went out of business.
on the other hand, if spybot search and destory went out of business, the computer world would be in big trouble.
Score: 2
|For the past several years I've avoided the big names in AV myself - they had become bloated messes that caused as many problems as they solved. However, In the past six months or so I've started to see a few turnarounds, and I squarely credit Spybot and similar high-quality freeware with this phenomenon. Over the last five years at least, Norton SystemWrecks had become a laughing stock. Their AV was especially weak. Their newest product seems much more solid and comprehensive - in fact, the beta saved my customer's freshly built system from a new in-the-wild infection. I briefly checked out a couple other commercial packages that seem to focusing more on spyware and hybrid malware with better heuristics. (No, McAffe wasn't among them, but I'm sure its probably still a lost cause.) I personally don't use SpyBot S&D for one simple reason..the lack of an auto-update feature. I switched to the equally free Spyware Terminator with its ClamAV plugin. Between that and two other anti-malwares I run, nothing gets in. Hats off to the good freeware authors, because their the true innovators right now and the big boys are being forced to catch up.
Score: 0
|fair enough. unfortunately, for the big name av's who are trying to turn around, many of us simply won't provide them with any more chances or our monies.
personally, i don't like any kind of "auto" updating. though they are convenient, they have a tendancy to occur even if the computer is in desperate need of a tune up before hand "and" at the same time that other softwares are trying to update themselves as well.
i'm satisified with the manual method to update spybot.
Score: 0
|If you can't compete...
Score: 0
|I always highly recommend and install Spybot over paid software all the time when dealing with Troubleshooting Windows and ad-ware/spy blocking. It's highly intrusive and protects using simple proactively using simple methods.
Score: 5
|AND I donate annually to S&D because it works so well.
Score: 1
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