carolcaslow said:
When I run my Windows Defender Scan, it never finds anything. If I run Ad
Aware or Spybot immediately after, they find all sorts fo thing that need to
be cleaned up. I am set up for automatic updates, so the program is current
- what is wrong here? What is this program supposed to be doing, besides
taking up space??
As Mr Cat says, AdAware and Spybot will diligently pick up tracking cookies
and thereby seem to be doing a lot. But if tracking cookies are the only
things they're finding, then you have nothing to worry about - Defender is
doing exactly what it's designed to do, and in your case, finding nothing.
Leaving aside the cookie issue, you might find this information helpful: I
have several antispyware scanners: AVG, Defender, AdAware, Spybot, a-squared,
and SuperAntispyware. AVG, AdAware, and a-squared have all, at some time or
another, detected spyware, or traces of spyware, on my computer. But every
one of those detections has subsequently turned out to be a false positive.
All this time, Defender has simply been doing its job correctly - reporting
nothing, because there was nothing to report. I've never experienced a
Defender false positive response.
If you, like me, use the internet sensibly, with a firewall and up-to-date
antivirus software in place, and a few good antispyware programs, then, quite
simply, your machine probably isn't infected. I don't say this to encourage
complacency, but rather as an antidote to the paranoia we often tend to
succumb to. As Bill Sanderson wisely reminded me recently - spyware doesn't
travel through the air into your computer!
