Patrolling for Pests
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As any regular surfer will know, the sanctity of your home computer is a concept that is totally disregarded by others. Your presence on the Internet is often regarded as an open invitation by the less scrupulous to infect your computer with all manner of nasties. It is not just viruses, although they do represent a threat to the unwary, that you need to be aware of but also such items as spyware, adware, diallers, password crackers and key logging software that is surreptitiously placed on your computer system.
Often you do not realise these piece of malicious code are operating on your system until the damage is done. One program that offers protection from such infection is CA's (Computer Associates) eTrust PestPatrol 2005. Personally I can think of several stronger terms than "Pest" to describe these forms of software.
Installation of PestPatrol requires the entry of a 23-character (including hyphens) license key. The program will automatically check for any updates available on-line - in my case it found several files that needed to be downloaded. Once these files had been integrated into the program, it was necessary to restart PestPatrol before the changes could be recognised. As standard you get one year of updates for both program files and any new spyware signatures.
PestPatrol's interface consists of three main sections that are accessed from buttons. By default the interface opens on the Welcome screen. This provides details of the program's active protection status (either stopped or started); last update details; and the number of days left in the current one year subscription period. With the active protection started the program will monitor activity and block any attempts to infiltrate unwanted code or settings into your current set up.
Switching to the Scan mode screen, there are options to instigate a Standard or Custom scan plus view a Scan History. Scans can be carried out immediately or scheduled for future action and are generally completed quickly. The results of a scan are presented in a hierarchical tree structure. Double-clicking on any individual items brings up a web page link showing details of the relevant item using a Spyware Encyclopaedia feature. Items can be selected for quarantine isolation or tagged for non-inclusion in any subsequent scans.
The final screen deals with Advanced Settings. You can configure the program's Active Protection status, update options and whether to allow the results of your scans to be used by the PestPatrol research team to improve its service. If you agree to this latter feature, then no personal data will be included in the information that is sent. Further options are available to manage items quarantined; create a list of items that should be ignored (such as data gathering services to which you subscribe); and checking the program's log.
PestPatrol will run on any Windows 98 or later system with a Pentium 350MHz or better processor plus 10MB of hard disk space and 128MB of RAM. Priced at £29.95, this is a reasonable product that is easy to use and can detect and remove a range of Spyware threats.
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