While looking over Webroot Spy Sweeper's main screen, I quickly noticed the subscription service status indicator in the top right-hand corner, as shown in Figure B. You can see that it says Subscription Service: Not Activated. This started me thinking about that "activation" screen I had seen during the installation. I began to wonder if I should have activated the software or if activation was the same as purchasing a subscription or something different. If I activated the software, but didn't purchase a subscription, could I update the spyware definitions and program? Again I turned to my Webroot sales representative. Although he said he hadn't seen this screen personally, he believed my original assumption was correct. This activation screen was used to collect marketing data and was completely unrelated to Spy Sweeper's subscription offerings.
Using Spy Sweeper
With my spyware definitions updated and my questions answered, I was finally ready to begin using Webroot Spy Sweeper. Before performing my first scan, I checked out the program's Options screen
From the Options screen, you can configure Spy Sweeper's scanning process, schedule routine scans, and set up IE protection options
For simplicity's sake, I decided to leave the default options in place and perform a Full Sweep on my Windows XP, 1-GHz Athlon test machine. I clicked the Full Sweep button and then clicked Start.
Full Sweep vs. Quick Sweep
Spy Sweeper offers two spyware scanning options: Full Sweep and Quick Sweep. Like its name implies, a Full Sweep scans all items loaded into the computer's memory, the Windows registry, files, and folders on the machine's hard drives. During a Quick Sweep, Spy Sweeper scans the memory items and the Windows registry, but only a very limited number of files and folders on the machine's hard drives. The Quick Sweep takes around 2 1/2 minutes compared to the Full Sweep's 10 minutes or more (the file and folder scanning takes longer).
When the sweep finished about 10 minutes later, Webroot Spy Sweeper reported finding 24 spyware items and 33 associated traces, as shown in Figure D. A single piece of spyware can manifest itself in multiple ways; the term traces is used to define individual instances of spyware.
A Full Sweep took around 10 minutes on my 1-GHz Athlon test machine running Windows XP.
I clicked Next, and Spy Sweeper displayed a list of each spyware item it found
Once Spy Sweeper completes a sweep, you can select which items should be removed and placed in the Quarantine folder.
