What exactly is Spybot?

Spybot is like the war hardened veteran in anti-malware apps.

It scans your computer for malware and other junk like tracking cookies, most recently used lists (MRU lists) and so on.

It's been around for quite some time, some users swear by it, others dislike it, while some use it along with other apps like Lavasoft Ad-Aware and MalwareBytes.

Spybot - Search & Destroy (often Spybot-S&D) is a popular malware, spyware and adware removal program which works on Microsoft Windows 95 and later. Like most malware scanners, Spybot-S&D scans the computer hard disk and/or RAM for malicious software.

Spybot-S&D was written by the German software engineer Patrick Michael Kolla, and is distributed by Kolla's Irish company Safer Networking Limited. Development began in 2000 when Kolla, still a student, wrote a small program to deal with the Aureate/Radiate and Conducent TimeSink programs, two of the earliest examples of adware

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"bots" or Robots are automated programs that wander around the web looking for websites or computers that they may sneak into. The website you're viewing may have a spybot accompanying the web page that gets downloaded (info that passes across the web to display the page and interacts with your computer to display the page and meanwhile, because your computer is so danged fast, may execute subroutines to implant other stuff to live in your computer to spy on you...) Spybots watch for your personal information wherever they might find it, in likely places, because it is generally known where software stores stuff. (I for instance know that a lot of stuff is stored in your Documents and Settings folder and in your registry...) and Spybots may monitor your keystrokes and send them to some email address next time you get online.

Spybot S&D is a program to remove them.

SpyBot Search and Destroy is a free program used to clear your computer of trojans, spyware, malware, etc. You can download it here: http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000...

It's primarily a malware removal program. In advanced mode, however, there are many other maintenance options such as editing your startup programs, checking BHOs and restoring/locking the host file.

Sbybot is one of the best anti-spyware programs. and its free. it also monitors your registry. its full name is Spybot Seach & Destroy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spybot

It's a program that runs to detect spyware and other nasty things on your computer, and removes them.