Ad-Aware 6 Plus - part III

by Andrew Cooper

Functionality

However, thanks to the developers there is an additional tool called Ad-watch. This is a kind of monitor that constantly protects your system against the installation of spyware, adware and other known pests. You can configure Ad-watch from the Settings menu, by clicking on the Ad-watch button:



Also some Ad-watch settings can be changed from the Tweak options menu (from there you can activate the popup blocking, IE save operations, and ActiveX install features).

As you can see from the screenshot above, Ad-watch is capable of protecting against various kinds of threats during your web-surfing.

Another nice feature of this tiny but powerful application is its plug-in technology support. Most users are familiar with plug-ins. For software that supports plug-ins, a plug-in is a module that can be added to that software to extend its capabilities.

Ad-Aware can be extended with four plug-ins: Messenger-Control, HexDump, Filespecs and LSP Explorer. However, only HexDump and Messenger-Control can be installed on the Ad-Aware Plus version. These two plug-ins are the most interesting to me and probably for you as well.

HexDump plug-in is for those of us who like to know everything about such files as cookies. Usually it is hard to read info stored in cookies, but with HexDump you can read it easily.

Messenger-Control is a plug-in everyone should install. If you receive Windows Messenger SPAM, then you'll definitely appreciate this plug-in. Microsoft promises to remove this feature with its next Windows Service Pack release but right now thousands of people are getting spammed via this feature of the Windows operating system.

Fortunately this little plug-in is capable of turning this service off:



Please don't confuse Window Messenger Service with your Instant Messaging software like ICQ, AOL Messenger and others. This plug-in has nothing to do with those and will not stop you from chatting with your pals.

Please see the following page for detailed information about the various plug-ins Ad-Aware have: http://www.lavasoft.de/software/plugins/

Verdict



I heard that Lavasoft, the developer of Ad-Aware, created a very good program, but until I tried it, I had no idea I'd need it. I discovered that it not only combats all kinds of spyware parasites, but also is exceptionally easy to use, which makes everyone I've talked to fall in love with this tiny program.

Of course, if you don't care if software manufacturers and web-sites owners gather info from your system, then you don't need this software. Either way, give it a try and I'll bet that you never uninstall it.

I definitely recommend Ad-Aware to anyone who wants to protect his or her privacy.

Developer's web site: http://www.lavasoft.de/

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