Spy Emergency is a comprehensive anti-spyware, anti-virus, and anti-spam all in one package. The program really takes detection and removal to a whole new level. Spy Emergency includes more than 2 million signatures. A simple quick scan detected the most virus and suspicious entries I have seen for years (I test antivirus daily). The software also includes a real time memory shield, web protection, auto updates, and even anti-spam. If one desires maximum sensitivity of their antivirus, Spy Emergency seems to fit the bill.
The installation of Spy Emergency was straightforward. The download 50 megabytes in size, included an installer and all necessary virus definitions on board. Once the installation was completed the program allows the user to customize whether they want to install the resident shield, shell extensions, or real-time protection. Some users (myself being included) don’t prefer to have a real time shield constantly slowing the system down and prefer on demand scans.
The scanning process of Spy Emergency is one to brag about. The program offers 4 different types of scans, a quick scan, system scan, full scan, and a custom scan. The scanners cans also be customized to for a standard or deep (more verbose) setting. The quick scan finished in approximately 1 minute and 46 seconds and found 5 suspicious entries. They are as follows, WinVNC, CliprexDSDVDPlayer, Network Stumbler, BehavesLike.Virus (heuristic) and Tracking Cookies. While all of these aren’t interment threats they can be classified as potentially unwanted software. The scanner only used about 2 percent CPU power and 22 megabytes of RAM which is very reasonable usage.
The real treat of Spy Emergency is in its real time protection. The program has approximately 12 shields and provides protection for Internet Explorer but also Mozilla Firefox and even Opera. Few and far between antivirus offer protection on alternative browsers other than IE. Some of the notable shields include ADS or anti-rootkit shield, phishing shield, spyware communication shield, BHO toolbar shield, and Windows Logon shield etc. The database of Spy Emergency can be set to update every 60 minutes which is significantly more frequently than Free AVG 2011 etc.
Some other features that Spy Emergency offer is a quarantine called “the cage†and a keep list which is essentially a whitelist. Finally, I was intrigued by a setting that enables an unpacker to open executables. This means that Spy Emergency can easily look inside .exe files for malware.
