Spyware seems so ubiquitous these days that it's hard to remember it wasn't always so. I first wrote about the topic in 2000, and in that same year Patrick Kolla started developing a program to counter the threat. In the early 2000s, Kolla's Spybot was one of the few antispyware utilities available, and it became hugely (and deservedly) popular. Unfortunately, over the years it hasn't kept up with modern malware. I stopped recommending it some years ago. But when we ran our roundup, Nine Ways to Wipe Out Spyware there was a great outcry at its omission. Apparently, many of you stuck by this elder statesman of spyware long after I gave up on it. I decided that if so many of you still swore by it, I owed it to you to put the latest version of Kolla's app through the same tests as all the rest—either to confirm your opinions or to warn you that Spybot didn't measure up. Accordingly, I ran the current version, Spybot – Search & Destroy 1.5, through my standard testing regimen.
The program hasn't visibly changed in years. It's still separated into a main Spybot scanning module and a real-time protection module that goes by the unusual name of TeaTimer. Installation is quick and it leads you through getting the latest updates and running its immunization process, which is supposed to prevent certain unauthorized changes to your system. I was a bit surprised at the date on the latest immunization files: July 25, 2007. That was over six months ago—not a good omen for Spybot.
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