On Your Side: Spyware Scanner Raises Doubts

Grace Aquino is a senior associate editor for PC World. You can send her e-mail at consumerwatch@pcworld.com.

Enigma Software Group's free spyware-scanning service scared me by finding many spyware programs on my PC. It claimed that the company's paid software, SpyHunter, could delete such sneaky programs from my system. As I was purchasing the product my browser indicated that the site was unsecured. Should a company that purports to protect me from online thievery be using an unsecured server? Can I trust SpyHunter to do what it claims?

Richard Lanke, Honolulu

On Your Side responds: As we went to press, Enigma Software had not replied to our repeated inquiries. However, we asked security expert and PC World author Mary Landesman to test the SpyHunter software. She found the product's scanning extremely slow. In addition, the application failed to detect a number of common spyware programs. As for the spyware it managed to detect, it did an incomplete job removing the offending program and the Registry changes associated with it.