Broadband Tech > Security > Security > CounterSpy users - opinions wanted

CounterSpy users - opinions wanted

I would also be interested in feedback from anyone who uses the Enterprise version of this product.
--
"Pressure makes diamonds."
--General George S. Patton

reply to DSL_Steve
I've read the comments at download.com and the most-commonly mentioned "Con" is too many false positives. Some of the posting dates were old so hopefully they've fixed the FP issues by now.

reply to DSL_Steve
I have been using CounterSpy on my XP Pro SP2 since January.

Pretty similar interface to GIANT/MS Anti-spyware.

I run Active Protection, and it has worked pretty well. Keeps me aware of all installs and registry changes.

$20/yr pretty decent price; I will most likely deploy to other machines this summer.

reply to DSL_Steve
used CounterSpy 14 day trial on a Win."ME" box about a month ago. Going into the second week it started acting strangely. After many different scans, (virus, adware, spyware, trojans & worms)nothing showed up. So I uninstalled CounterSpy and BAM, everything was back to normal. I feel its not totally compatible with Win. 98/ME. This box,(athlon xp-2000, 1 gig. ram) has always ran well, and still does. Going on 3 yr. install of Win. "ME", so I know this box well. Just my 2 cents. jd

reply to DSL_Steve
Sunbelt Counter Spy is considered one of the best anti-spyware apps at the moment. Vey good write-ups on the Internet one of the latest is the following link:

»home.businesswire.com/portal/sit···sLang=en

I have been using Counter Spy since February this year having chosen it carefully after trying out a number of other anti-spyware programs. It's one of the best to my mind and by far superior to many better known and popular apps. Counter Spy with Spy Sweeper are the two top anti-spyware progs to have on your PC. It is similar to Microsoft Antispyware/ex-Giant because it was/is a legitimate and licensed Clone powered by former GIANT (the code independently owned by Sunbelt)but far better than MSAS. It's a trustworthy anti-spyware with a high level of detection and nil FP's. I would recommend this program to all.

Cheers

I have been using Counter Spy for approx. 6 months now on win98se.I find it strange to hear of the FP,s issue,because in this period of time I haven,t experienced any at all.
The program I find is very well laid out,easy to configure,although I do not use all of the blocking features it offers as I have that covered with other apps.On average it updates once a week,and that also can be scheduled if wished to be automatic.I,personally would take with a grain of salt the comments about a product emanating from Download.com.All in all,for me,I feel that this one of the best spyware scanners out there at this present time.
Art

reply to DSL_Steve
I currently use Counterspy on WinME with no problems or instability. They are now beta testing definitions updates prior to general release so there should be a sharp reduction in FPs. IMO it's a very good program and the folks at Sunbelt are very responsive to user problems.
--
God put me on this Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now, I am so far behind I will never die.

reply to DSL_Steve
By the way fellows, may any of please tell me how to disable the schedule scan? It insist on saying it´ll perform at 2:00.
Thanks in advance.

reply to DSL_Steve
You can click disable schedule in the lower right corner then click update schedule to save it. Same goes for scheduling a scan for a certain day or once a week, save it by checking update schedule...:)

reply to DSL_Steve
I have been running Counterspy on my Win98SE machine for 83 days, and I have had no problems. Before buying a Counterspy license I was a bit leary of what sort of load the active protections would put on my system, but I found whatever slow downs there might have been are minor and barely noticeable.

reply to DSL_Steve
I ran the online CounterSpy scan back in March (when they still had it. It has since been removed partly at my urging and is available now only for Dell techs). This scan informed me that I had 5 keyloggers. One of them was supposedly the worst of all keyloggers. I was stunned. I don't get spyware and here this scanner claims 5 key loggers? I clicked on the button to clean/quarantine them and that didn't happen. Instead, much like AdAware is today when you click on support in the Help file, I got taken to a screen where I was told I had to purchase CounterSpy if I wanted to get rid of the spyware.

I didn't purchase it! I felt burned. So, I came here and posted. The Sunbelt President saw my post and PMed me to ask me if I would send the log of the false positives to Sunbelt. Well there is no log with the online scanner. So Alex asked me if I would be so kind as to help them by installing the product, running a scan and then sending the log. So I did this. More keyloggers found. All false positives. As soon as Sunbelt would get some of the false positives fixed, I would find more on a new scan. It was ridiculous. About this time, Castlecops started the official Counterspy forum. Everyone there was finding fps. The call went out both here and in the official forum for beta testers so that this sort of problem wouldn't get so far as the official definitions releases.

I was happy to see the official forum at Castlecops and the setup of beta testers was a good idea. And Alex removed the sleazy on line scan that had given me such a bad impression of Counterspy because the online scan tried to scare you into buying the product when the items found would turn out to all be fps. He kept the scan just for Dell techs to use. He had been already thinking of removing it when I had the distasteful experience with it.

About five days after installing Counterspy, I began to have significant problems with the software. This was on XP Pro SP1a. Counterspy began freezing after an on demand scan when I would want to look at the results. The freezing was not just CS but my computer would also freeze with 100% CPU use and I would have to resort to c/a/d. On reboot, Process Guard suddenly began to freeze as CS would load which then would cause the computer to freeze even though I had told Process Guard to allow CS to start (I had kept PG in learning mode for awhile) and there had been no problems for the first 4-5 days that I had CS installed.

I tried to stop CS from running in the systray. You cannot do that. I just wanted an on demand spyware checker but that is not possible with CS. CS also caused my nVidia Settings to disappear from the systray. That is extremely difficult to recover and it is essential to have the settings available in the systray. I had to use System Restore to get that back after CS destroyed it. I reported all these problems, both in the official CS support forum, and by email to Sunbelt support. I got a reply from Sunbelt by email suggesting that I make sure certain windows components were the latest. They were the latest already so I reported that by email and asked what I should do next as I could not run an on demand scan at all as CS would now not freeze after the scan completed but would freeze immediately upon opening and consume 100 CPU and proceed to freeze the computer itself.

I never got a second reply from Sunbelt support. I posted all the same information in the support forum. One Sunbelt tech replied by PM at Castlecops and said he would pull my support ticket and get back to me. I never heard another word from him. I didn't get help in the support forum either.

I had installed CS originally only to help Sunbelt out because they wanted my logs regarding the FPs. They were really happy to get the logs for the steady stream of FPs that I saw the first 4-5 days I had CS installed. They fixed them promptly although it usually took two releases of new definitions to fully fix that set of FPs and with each new set of definitions there were NEW FPs!

I understand from reading the support forum that Sunbelt finally identified and fixed the problem causing all the fps most of which were keyloggers. So, I commend them for getting that fixed. But I never got the support I needed for an extremely serious problem with CS. I finally just uninstalled it as I was tired of trying to get support and I didn't really want an anti-spyware that would not allow me to turn off the real time monitor and just use the on demand scan.

I think CS has great potential but, at least back in March, it left a lot to be desired and was totally unstable and unusable on my XP box after a few days and I got only feeble help from Sunbelt. I may have had problems at the time when Sunbelt was overwhelmed by all the FPs and perhaps support is much better now. I would suggest that you read the official support forum to get a feel for CS before you decide if you want to try it or not. I think that eventually it will be much better than MSAS as CS has access to their own definitions as well as Microsoft's. I should probably mention that MSAS was an even greater disaster on my XP Pro box when I tried it on Jan 7 the day it was released. It froze my computer also and worse when I uninstalled it, it destroyed my Conexant modem which Dell had to replace. I would beware of both of these at the present time and just use the tried and true Spybot and Spyware Blaster (and AdAware if you must).

»castlecops.com/f164-CounterSpy.html
--
Around 2005 a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. The very survial of the nation will seem to be at stake.Sometime before 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history. The risk and promise will be very high. The Fourth Turning Wm. Strauss

Mele20, you can run Counterspy without the resident protection and it appearing in the system tray. That is the way I run it - as an on demand scanner only. You can either specify no active protection at the time of installation or disable it in the GUI.
--
God put me on this Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now, I am so far behind I will never die.

Hmmm...maybe I had something to do with that change? You could NOT do this when I had CS. I even asked support about it and the chief tech replied that it was not possible. So, now it is! That is good news.

reply to DSL_Steve
I installed it on April, found one key logger (fp) that turned out to be a Kodak plugin, I was lucky not to delete it, only quarantined it. Customer support was very helpful, and I decided to leave it installed. After the trial period finished, I was convinced enough to buy it. So far it has been working without problems, very low computer resources are used by it´s two real time processes:
2-5 % processor usage every 5 to 10 seconds and about 18mb memory between both.
The FP issue has been almost resolved, and from two or one and a half months to this date, nobody has complained about the definitions. They are delaying the defs because of intensive testing just to avoid the issue. It looks like they care very much about their reputation as a sound enterprise that cares much about customers. Only hope that this will last


Windows 2000, 1mb RAM, Zone Alarm Pro, BitDefenderAV and WinPatrol residents.

reply to mers2

reply to Mele20
I have CS ver. 1.0.29, and you can disable active protection as easy as going to the view menu>settings>active protection, and from there you have the options to check/uncheck the following:

1.- enable the counterspy active protection monitors on startup.
2.-Enable real time spyware protection.

Besides you can enable/disable each of the three 3 Active monitors, one for internet, one for the system and another for aplications.

Furthermore, each monitor has several checkpoints (up to 25 for a single one), that can be anabled/disabled individually.

That gives the user, much more control over the active protection than he or she will ever need to tweak .

reply to DSL_Steve
Ah...sorry. I see my mistake now. I was looking at the file version but the wrong file version. I looked at the setup launcher file version by mistake and that is the same for the current download at Sunbelt as it was for my download back in March(which makes sense as why would they need a new setup launcher)?

Just now I looked again and checked the correct file version in properties and I had CS 1.0.26. The current one available for download is the one you guys have 1.0.29. So, I'll try it again. Thanks.
--
Around 2005 a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. The very survial of the nation will seem to be at stake.Sometime before 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history. The risk and promise will be very high. The Fourth Turning Wm. Strauss