Spybot S&D 1.6

[Tarun]

Spybot - Search and Destroy detects and removes spyware. Spyware silently tracks your surfing behavior to create a marketing profile for you that is transmitted without your knowledge to the compilers and sold to advertising companies. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you haven't intentionally installed, if your browser crashes inexplicably, or if your home page has been "hijacked" (or changed without your knowledge), your computer is most probably infected with spyware. Even if you don't see the symptoms, your computer may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging. Spybot - Search and Destroy is free, so there's no harm giving it a try to see if something has invaded your computer.

Changes:

• Scan speed vastly improved (with default settings: ca. 5x)
  
• IE addon has more options
  
• More browsers supported
  
• Improved Terminal Services support
  
• Improved Vista support
  
• Improved blind/disabled users support
  

Improved Scan Speed

Reported a few weeks ago as one of the big issues users face, Spybot-S&D 1.6 integrates parts of the future 2.0 file scanning engine to speed up the on-demand scan.

Up-to-date browser support

Both immunization and the on-demand scan are able to access a dozen different browsers, which now includes the latest revisions of the most popular ones, Firefox and Opera.

Easier On-Access Use

Until now, our on-access part was able to block bad entries, but at the same time, confused many novice users by asking for confirmation on changes of other monitored system entries as well. While this is a great feature for all experienced users who want full control over their systems, we decided that we need to make this easier for the average user, and integrated automated decisions based on the system entry database built through our RunAlyzer, containing more than quarter of a million decisions.

OpenSBI

Safer Networking also announces OpenSBI, our attempt at opening up the fight against malware to anyone who wants to participate. OpenSBI means we've published documenation and tools that anyone can use to create their own malware detection patterns for use with Spybot-S&D, and share those with other Spybot-S&D users.

• Diversity - everyone can create detection templates for any software, without depending on a central authority to acknowledge its threat.
  
• Neutrality - we cannot be bought to remove detections from our database, but if you do not believe us, you can simply publish your own rules against some malware.
  
• Continuity - OpenSBI ensures that you'll get updates as long as someone is interested in updating the database (which does not mean we intend to do less work in adding new detections).
  
• Flexibility - as a system administrator using the network edition, you can make sure that working time is not wasted by employees playing the latest Moorhuhn clone if you add your own detection for it. Keep in mind that some relaxation is said to even improve work results.
  

And quite a lot more bug fixes and new features, which can be found on bug tracker.

Download: Spybot - Search and Destroy 1.6

Homepage: Safer Networking

List: Lunarsoft

[Eldmannen]

OpenSBI, interesting.

Nice.

[Ultimate Predator]

Sounds great.

[greenknight]

Faster scanning is the main thing I care about. Hope it's as good as they say.

[Tarq57]

Working well, here. Full scan seems a bit faster, 8 min,didn't time the earlier version but I'm pretty sure it was at least 10.

[Tarun]

Yeah it's loading faster and scanning faster. Even witht he /allhives switch.

[greenknight]

I tried installing 1.6 over the top of 1.5.2 - not good, a scan was no faster than before, almost 2 hours. Uninstalled and reinstalled, scans are now much faster; with AVG's resident shield shut off, a scan took 26 minutes 39 seconds.

With AVG re-enabled, a scan took about 8 minutes longer. Still pretty good.

[RTZ]

why has this program doubled in size. its a monster now.

[Tarun]

I noticed it went from 9.XX MB to 14.XX MB just for the download. I admit I did not check the .exe file size for Spybot.

Several 2.0 things did go into 1.6.

[RTZ]

That program is over 45MB now on harddrive, it's uncanny.

[Tarun]

Yeah mine's taking up 40MB too. Doesn't worry or bother me much at all. I've got a 320GB hard drive and there are now 1TB drives out there.

[Eldmannen]

Yeah, I have 500 gb drive + 250 gb drive.

So I don't worry about running out of space, but I still don't like when things are bigger than I think they should.

Example, if a calculator takes 40 megabyte, then I think that sucks. Even if it is no threat to my disk space.

[RTZ]

I'ts definitely better and very reliable too.