Spybot S&D is one of my favorite anti-spyware tools. I’ve been removing spyware for years, and Spybot has helped me on each and every instance. I’m not saying is the only anti-spyware tool out there, but because of it’s dedicated creator, great and simple user interface but yet advanced options makes it a great ally in the battle against several types of malicious software.

Spybot screenshot

Spybot S&D offers a very easy and intuitive UI (user interface), that after following a few simple steps can help you get rid of the unwanted software.

Download

We have a link to this application in our “tools” page, but you can also obtain the latest release from the original Spybot S&D website: www.safer-networking.org

1. Select your location by choosing your language/location flag.
2. Click on the “Download” link, located on the top right side.
3. Scroll down until you reach the downloads section and click on the download cube icon.
4. Now you have to select a file server from where to download it, the main mirrors are usually the best option, keep in mind that when you click on the “download here” link, this will redirect you to the website that is actually hosting the file, some of those websites have confusing advertising, so make sure you select the right download button.

Be aware of deceiving download links

Installation

The installation process is a very intuitive one, after you’ve downloaded the installation file, run it and follow the simple steps. My recommendation is that less advanced users disable the permanent protection option called “TeaTimer”, not because is a bad tool, actually it’s a very good one, but because it’s there to alert and prevent changes in the windows registry, which may confuse and annoy the common user.

Noobie users may want to disable the TeaTimer option

First Use

After you install Spybot, a wizard will prompt you to define some simple setting and it will ask you to update it’s database of definitions, it’s very important to keep anti-malware software updated. This wizard will also prompt you to “immunize” your system, immunization protects your computer against some types of spyware and malicious websites that promote them.

Performing a system scan

It’s important to understand that Spybot is not a resident application, this means that it doesn’t protect your computer at all times, but instead it’s a standalone application that you will have to run often, my experience tells me that running Spybot every couple weeks is a good procedure (of course you must have a resident antivirus application running at all times). To scan your system follow this steps:

1. Open Spybot
2. Update it by clicking “Search for Updates” and download all necessary updates. (skip if you recently did this)
3. Start the scan by clicking on the “Check for problems” button
4. Spybot will prompt you to delete the temporary files, click yes
5. You will now see at the bottom of the application, a filling green bar moving toward the right, this indicated scanning activity and progress, the amount of time it takes to complete this task depends on your system specs
6. Now that it has finished scanning, Spybot will select all problems by default, items marked in red indicate a real threat and items colored in blue indicate tracking usage. In the case that Spybot has found a malicious piece of software, you need to get rid of it, to do that, make sure you have items selected and click on the button labeled “Fix selected problems”, in some cases it can take several minutes to remove all the threats so you have to wait for the success message.
7. If there still are malicious traces, running Spybot in Windows Safe Mode is highly recommended.

And that’s basically it, remember to always update and run Spybot as often as possible.

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