This is the 20th in series of Giveaways in Avinashtech Birthday Celebrations i.e. ABC-20. We are giving away 10 licenses of SUPERAntiSpyware Professional Edition with Lifetime Updates to Avtechies.

PS:- This review is done by our Forum Mod Ashwin who blogs at Ashwingeek.

Developer’s description

“SUPERAntiSpyware is the most thorough scanner on the market. Our Multi-Dimensional Scanning and Process Interrogation Technology will detect spyware that other products miss! SUPERAntiSpyware will remove ALL the Spyware, NOT just the easy ones!

Benefits and Features

  • Quick, Complete and Custom Scanning of Hard Drives, Removable Drives, Memory, Registry, Individual Folders and More! Includes Trusting Items and Excluding Folders for complete customization of scanning!
  • Detect and Remove Spyware, Adware, Malware, Trojans, Dialers, Worms, KeyLoggers, HiJackers and many other types of threats.
  • Repair broken Internet Connections, Desktops, Registry Editing, Task Manager and more with our unique Repair System! Spyware application often disable system components to prevent removal – SUPERAntiSpyware resets and restores these items in seconds!
  • Real-Time Blocking of threats! Prevent potentially harmful software from installing or re-installing!
  • Schedule either Quick, Complete or Custom Scans Daily or Weekly to ensure your computer is free from harmful software.
  • Quarantine items detected and removed for complete protection. Items in the quarantine may be restored to your computer if desired.
  • Detailed scan logs with complete information about detected and removed threats and their locations within your computer. Scan logs allow you to review scheduled scan results at anytime.

Advanced detection and removal

* Multi-Dimensional Scanning

SUPERAntiSpyware is a next generation scanning system that goes beyond the typical rules based scanning methods. Our Multi-Dimensional Scanning system detects existing threats as well as threats of the future by analyzing threat characteristics in addition to code patterns.

* First Chance Prevention

SUPERAntiSpyware examines over 50 critical points of your system each time your system starts up and shuts down to eliminate threats before they have a chance to infect and infiltrate your system.

* Process Interrogation Technology

SUPERAntiSpyware features our unique Process Interrogation Technology (PIT) that allows threats to be detected no matter where they are hiding on your system. Many new types of threats utilize “Rootkits” or “Kernel Drivers” to hide themselves to avoid detection by standard anti-spyware applications. SUPERAntiSpyware’s Process Interrogation Technology locates even the toughest of threats.

* Dedicated Threat Research Team / Daily Updates*

SUPERAntiSpyware features a dedicated threat research team that scours the web daily and analyzes thousands of possible threats to provide the most up to date protection available by providing daily definition updates.”

Product homepage: http://www.superantispyware.com/

version reviewed: 4.46.1000 Pro version

MY PC & OS tech specs: Windows XP Home SP 3, Dual core E2220 2.4GHz with 2gb RAM

Review

SUPERAntiSpyware (SAS) is one of the most popular spyware removal softwares that has been around for a while.

It is available in free and pro versions. The pro version includes a lifetime subscription (free upgrades to future versions), realtime protection, automatic/scheduled updates and scheduled scans.

The GUI is simple and user-friendly. It can be accessed by right-clicking the small bug icon from the taskbar and selecting “Click on Scan for spyware,Adware,malware”

Types of Scans:

There are three types of scans available,

Quick scan: which scans registry items, and other common places where spywares, adwares may be installed.

Complete scan: thorough scan of your entire computer.

Custom scan: memory, registry, start-up locations,cookies and selected folders

New updates for the SAS database are available everyday, adding protection and removal against new trojans, malwares etc

I suggest you update it at-least once a week or before running a scan

Scheduled scanning: (only for pro version)

You can scheduled a scan of any of the above mentioned types

You can also select options like Auto-quarantine and removal, auto reboot if necessary, or auto shut down

Manage quarantine options:

Quarantined items will be placed here and you can restore a quarantined item if you are sure that it is a false positive or remove them from quarantine.

Preferences:

A whole bunch of settings are available under this tab.

The most useful of which is under “Hi-Jack Protection“, which can prevent changes to your browser’s homepage.

Also protects SAS from being terminated by any other application, except the Windows task manager

General and start-up tab: has options to change settings of Program start-up

Scanning control: has various options to change scan settings. I recommend you leave this at its default settings

Real time protection (only for pro version): prevents spywares,malwares,etc from being installed on your PC

First chance prevention scans your PC to detect and remove any infections at start-up/shutdown.

Statistics/logs: contains logs of scan reports. may come in handy if you contact SAS support or any malware removal forum

Repairs: used to repair hijacked browser settings

You can view items that have been blocked or detected by right -clicking on the taskbar icon and selecting “View Blocked Spyware Applications“

From my personal experience:

I usually run a complete scan once in a week/15 days, sometimes the scan results would show some adware cookies. (which are not exactly potentially harmful)

Since I don’t surf on wazez/or other bad sites, I haven’t really encountered anything harmful, but its always good to be on the safe side and scan your PC regularly.

SAS is very light on resources, idle memory usage is usually around 600 to 700K.

SAS’s realtime protection blocked a toolbar from being installed on my PC once, unfortunately I don’t have the screenshot, but it was a longtime ago

Since it is not a full-powered anti-virus, I would recommend that you use SUPERAntiSpyware alongside a good Anti-virus like Avast,or Avira or any AV of your choice.

I use SAS Pro alongside MBAM(free), Avast Home AV, Online Armor FW and WinPatrol Plus without any slowdowns/conflicts.

GIVEAWAY :

We have Ten (10) Licenses of  SUPERAntiSpyware Professional Edition with Lifetime Updates to giveaway . The rules are simple. For being eligible to participate in contest/draw, you need to do the following:

  1. Subscribe to Avinashtech by entering your email address in the subscribe box on right sidebar of the blog or by clicking this link. Do remember to verify your email address when you get the verification email from Feedburner.
  2. After that, just leave your name and email address in the form by clicking this link.
  3. Leave a comment below telling why you would like to have SUPERAntiSpyware License.

PS:- Keep in mind, Multiple entries will disqualify you from the draw. I hate disqualifying People who think they can use different names or email addresses. There is more than just your name or email which can tell its duplicate entry. Also, use same Name in Step 2 and 3.

Forum Discussion thread: SUPERAntiSpyware Giveaway : Discussion and Review/ feedback