How many antispyware do we need to detect and remove spyware?

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Regards - Charles

 

charlesvar--thanks for telling us about this study. Of course the stated conclusion is what we all have known. The top spyware detector programs are good, but they do not, individually, catch everything. Looking at it the other way around, each program has its own strengths (like AdAware for tracking cookies).
I feel the study had one fault in it. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems that the tests using each spyware detector were not necessarily done with a fresh install of the spyware. AdAware seemed to be run only after SpybotS&D (and perhaps all the other detectors) had cleaned up most spyware already.
The study would suggest MSAS is no worse than, and possibly slightly better than CounterSpy. Therefore, the study suggests that perhaps MSAS and Counterspy are mutually exclusive and there is no need to run both. Perhaps a slight edge to MSAS.
There are two caveats here
1) The main black mark against MSAS is that it recommends "Ignore" for the Clariant spyware, as Donna noted. I understand this has been happening only in versions of MSAS dating from April or so, when MS started talking with Clariant about a take over. But if users recognize that "Ignore" really means "Remove" (in the case of Clariant and Gain), then MSAS does a good job.
2) CounterSpy supposedly has a new engine in their latest version. This engine is different from the one MS bought and uses in MSAS and probably from the one in the study reported. We will have wait for new tests to learn whether CounterSpy has improved because of the new engine.
Finally, it is not clear whether or not the SpybotS&D detections were something different than what CounterSpy and MSAS had detected. Spybot seems to account for detections in a way that inflates the number of findings.

Perhaps others will reach different conclusions.