Girisoft has released AVG Anti Spyware few months back. I got a chance to install the free version on my old Windows machine 2 days back. AVG Anti spyware is available in both free and paid versions similar to AVG Anti Virus. The free edition offers Daily database updates, Heuristics to detect unknown threats, Automatic Cleaning Engine. What it lacks and available in the paid version are Automatic online-update, Real-time monitoring of the entire system, Self-protection at kernel layer guaranteeing gapless monitoring.
The installation was pretty simple and went smooth. The UI is neat and looks little Macish. The main screen shows the current status of the anti spyware. It shows the last update date, last scan, number of signatures, detected malwares etc. (Click the screenshot below).
The top level menu has the following options:
Status (Main windows as shown above), update (to check for updates), scanner (for system scan option), shield (showing what sheilds are active), infections, reports, analysis, tools and help.
The scanner setting under the scan menu has options for what to scan, when to scan etc. and options to generate reports. (Click the screenshot below to view).
If you choose the tools menu, you’ll see two tabs namely Antispy and Shredder. The Antispy allows you to disable privacy related options in error reporting, Windows Media Player and lots of miscellaneous options like disabling scripting, some file extensions, CD auto start etc. The Shredder tab allows you to shred important files. (Click the screentshot)
The anti spyware installs an option in the right click menu to scan files for spywares. It’s a pretty useful feature. If you download any file, you can scan for anti spyware before you install it. Overall I liked the product for the UI, features and most importantly for the price. I’m not sure how good it is in finding the spyware since I didn’t have anything in my system, but you can’t complain for that price.