Everyone who owns a computer needs to protect their investment with a good adware cleaner. Before you get click happy and just download and install anything, there are some important things you need to know to make sure you are giving yourself the best protection.
Just follow these five tips for picking the right adware cleaner, and you will be implementing the best protection available. This will save your hours of headaches with adware cleaners that aren’t up to the challenge.
You Get What You Pay For
The first thing most people do when they look for an adware cleaner is to look for something free. Even though it is hard to resist, you may want to keep a few things in mind about free adware cleaners. Many times a free adware cleaner is just a free trial and doesn’t offer all of the features that a good tool is providing you.
Sometimes you can get baited into installing a free adware cleaner that is actually adware itself! You install it thinking that it is going to help you out, then it starts blasting you with ads. This is a pretty common trick that is going around the internet right now.
To top it all off, most free adware cleaners don’t catch everything. Many of these tools are developed by good people with good intentions, but many of them work off donations or no money, so their research into emerging threats is limited.
It is pretty common to run one free adware cleaner and it will find and remove a few threats. Then you run another free adware cleaner on top of it and it will find more threats that were missed by the first one. I have even ran a third free adware cleaner on a machine once, and it picked up stuff missed by the previous two.
If you decide to only rely on free adware cleaners, you will be saving $30.00 or $40.00. But you do run the risk of leaving yourself to vulnerable to malicious attacks. Now let’s talk about the things you should look for in a good adware cleaner before you shell out any of your hard-earned money.
Real-time Monitor
The most important consideration for an adware cleaner is that it comes with a module that is always watching your computer for threats. A real-time monitor like this makes your adware protection hands and worry-free. This feature is usually not found in a free adware cleaner and is typically disabled in free trials.
Real-time Updates
An adware cleaner is only good as its signature file. This file is how the adware cleaner knows what is bad and to look out for it on your computer. If you never update your signature file, then your adware cleaner won’t be keeping up with the times. On the same token, the more often it updates, the better protection it will provide you. A good adware cleaner will be looking for updates in real-time.
Scheduled Scanning
It is important to not only have real-time protection, but also have a way to scan your entire system for threats. The last thing you want to do is tie a string around your finger to remind you to do an adware scan. Look for an adware cleaner that will let you schedule the scan for a time that is convenient for you. Like 3a.m. while you are fast asleep!
Thorough Scanning
Your adware cleaner should be thorough and comprehensive. When you are evaluating a potential adware cleaner, verify with the developer that the tool will remove the following categories; adware, malware, toolbars, internal popup programs, XXX and other dialers, malicious cookies, and browser hijackers.
Most developers of adware cleaners will make this information available on their website, usually under a “features” section. If you can’t find out or verify information, it is a good sign to move on to the next adware cleaner.
If you would like a suggestion on which adware cleaners to check out, then here are a few that we like:
