Spyware become the nemesis of each computer user in the last years. The fear of having personal data stolen and posted on the internet or misused in various ways, increased the public interest into security applications, while offered excellent development opportunities for the anti-malware market.
Double Anti-Spy is a recently released anti spyware application. Unlike other applications from the same category, it uses two integrated engines to scan and detect malicious software. Both engines are licensed from different companies and integrated in a common interface.
The interface is divided in four tabs, each with a specific functionality. First one, the Status tab offers at a glance information about software status: scan history, last update, and active protection status. The Scan tab allows users to perform three types of scans: a quick one, a full system scan, or a custom one for selected folders or drives. The Active Defense tab contains active protection settings related to unknown programs, risks handling, scheduled scans, and blocked folders list. The last tab, the Settings, handles scan settings, updates, and Windows integration. Overall the interface is well designed and easy to use.
Using two malware detection engines does not necessarily mean effective protection and definitely not a fast scanning time. I tested Double Anti-Spy to fully scan a drive running on a 10.000 rpm stripped RAID and containing 56 GB of data. The whole scan with both engines took 123 minutes, which is a huge amount of time.
The application was tested by the prestigious Virus Bulletin security site, having an overall score in virus reactive and proactive protection of 76.43%.
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