Spyware is often taken lightly by a lot of people, whose main concerns are focused on other threats such as viruses and malware. That is not the case anymore, when your computer becomes infected with spyware that will start a rampage, making your PC act in unexpected ways. If you are on the lookout for a trustworthy anti-spyware program, Spyware Doctor is a top choice, featuring a huge database and enough capabilities to safeguard your system at all times, from no less than 10 different types of threats.
Spyware Doctor – Scanning ProcessInstallation & Requirements
Spyware Doctor installs a toolbar for your browser without notifying you or asking for your permission. As usual, the toolbar can be uninstalled later as an independent application, but this type of behavior can be seen as a major flaw by users with low tolerance for such actions.
The shareware version of Spyware Doctor will allow you to benefit from real-time protection and detection, but the threat removal feature will remain disabled until you decide to buy a license. Hopefully it will be enough to experience the program’s capabilities, make a personal evaluation and decide if it’s worth buying.
Spyware Doctor only supports Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/Windows7 and the system requirements are extremely low:
– Intel 486 or higher CPU
– 20 MB of RAM
– 8 MB of HDD space
Interface
Spyware Doctor puts a glossy and user friendly interface at our disposal, where everything is placed conveniently for ease of access. All the functions are provided through a sidebar menu with clean buttons, on the left of the window, while the main content area displays performed actions or detailed information and options for each feature.
The scanning process might slow down your computer considerably and in some rare cases it could even interfere with your browsing speed, but the superior detection rates of Spyware Doctor will make it worth the wait.
Last but not least, in order to fully close Spyware Doctor you need to perform a reboot. Considering that we usually want to keep our security programs turned on at all times, we rarely need to close this application so that required system restart is not a big inconvenience.
Pros
– Easy to use interface.
– Large spyware database.
– Live protection.
– Very low system requirements.
Cons
– Sneaky toolbar installation.
– In rare cases it can slow down your browser’s speed or bring it to a halt.
Spyware Doctor Alternatives
Even if the shareware version of Spyware Doctor was designed to persuade us into buying the product, if you decide it doesn’t suit you there are plenty of similar applications to choose from.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware can be a superior choice compared to Spyware Doctor, delivering a clean installation with no adware or toolbars and a scanning process that will detect pretty much any threat on your computer. Just like Spyware Doctor, Malwarebytes’ is a shareware program, the only difference between the two is that the latter will not only show you the list of threats found on your machine, but remove them too.
Spybot – Search & Destroy (S&D) is another alternative to Spyware Doctor, offering some protection, for free, but false positives and low support makes it a less desirable choice. However, it’s free and even if it can’t detect as many threats as Spyware Doctor, at least it will remove them.
Conclusion
Spyware Doctor is an efficient anti-spyware tool and besides a few insignificant problems it can be your privacy’s best friend if given the opportunity. This piece of software might not be free, but the vast spyware database combined with the real-time protection and comfortable interface will make you get your money’s worth.
