Sunbelt software CounterSpy 1.5 review

CounterSpy comes from the same company that sells the excellent Kerio Personal Firewall, which won a Budget Buy award in our August issue. Its anti-spyware software has a lot to live up to, with plenty of strong competition.

The program combines real-time protection with a scanner and both did well in our tests. As we installed some spyware, we were offered the choice of allowing it to run or not. Given that some people, wise or not, might actually want these programs, it's nice to be asked. It didn't bother us with questions when we installed the rogue anti-spyware utility, though; it blocked it straight away, which is a good thing.

After installing everything that CounterSpy would allow us to, we rebooted and ran a system scan. The software picked up a large list of bad files and even detected our rootkit, putting it in the minority of anti-spyware programs in this test. It even did us the courtesy of setting a Windows System Restore point.

Following what appeared to be a successful battle with the spyware, we ran Ad-Aware to ensure that nothing remained and to our surprise, it found one single Registry entry for the rogue anti-spyware program. Considering that none of that spyware's files had ever been installed, this is not really a problem. It does show how hard it is to clear out your system fully after encountering spyware, though.

CounterSpy doesn't look quite as slick as some of the other programs here, but it's not ugly and we'll take efficient spyware detection over a posh interface every time. There are a couple of privacy bonuses built in, including a file-shredding option and a History Cleaner for removing internet logs and temporary files from Windows programs such as Internet Explorer. It can even scan your system for poorly chosen security settings and highlight any changes that it thinks you should make. You can have it make the changes automatically, too.

This is a great anti-spyware program that is good value and comes with some nice extras. There's little to choose between it and ewido anti-spyware technically, and it's £3 cheaper.