Free Anti-Spyware Software

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 etc. 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.

Free Anti-Spyware & Browser Hijacking Prevention

SpywareBlaster (2.14MB)
This nifty program prevents spyware ActiveX controls from being installed on your computer by setting your system so that these controls are prevented from being installed or run (for the technically inclined, it sets the "kill bit" for these controls). It also blocks cookies from certain websites or companies that are known to use these cookies to track a user's surfing habits.

AVG Free Spyware, Adware, Trojan, Hijacking, Keyloggers Detection and Removal
Trojan scanner that removes trojans, backdoors, worms, keyloggers, dialers and other spyware. It requires Windows 2000 and 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.

Keylogger Hunter
This program attempts to detect keyboard monitoring programs that may be running on your system.

Spybot Search and Destroy
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 Standard Edition
Ad-aware detects and removes spyware, adware, trojans, hijackers, dialers, malware, keyloggers, etc. The Standard Edition is free for non-commercial use only.

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).

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Disclaimer: The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use at your own risk. We do not provide support for any of these products, but you are free to contact the companies directly.