Did you know that there's a war going on in the cyber space? Of course you did: viruses, malware and spyware vs. the rest of us armed with the anti-all weaponry. Well, there's more to this war than you might know.

In this review we'll expose the war that's waged between the suppliers of the 'weaponry,' the war waged by the producers of anti-spyware tools for your Desktop, and ultimately, for your hard-earned dollars.

Human psychology behind anti-spyware

Which anti-spyware product would you buy:

1. The one that found 40 infected files after the scan; or
2. the one that found 90 infected files after the scan?

Most consumers would go for answer number 2 - after all, more is better.

The logic is that the more the software finds of the bad stuff the better it is. Well, guess what? Some anti-spyware software companies have deliberetly made their software detect more stuff on your computer, even non-malicious files, just to get the highest detection rates.

In the past, Xoftspy, one of the commercial anti-spyware programs has been reported to do just that. However, recently the company behind this product has cleaned up it's act, which has resulted in their product being removed from various rogue anti-spyware reporting sites.

Slim Xoftspy

Going at a price of $39.95, ParetoLogic's Xoftspy has a simple interface and performs a fairly fast scan. The software is supposed to be able to detect 43 000 different infections.

One thing we noticed in the version we looked at is that it didn't have a scheduler. By the time you read this, a new version might already be out with this feature.

Now there's nothing that stops you from downloading Xoftspy for free, and even running it in order to determine how the detection works on your computer. From what we can tell, there seem no additional programs installed with Xoftspy, and the uninstallation should go easily.

So, why not take the thing for a spin? By the way, though the scan is free, to actually remove the bugs Xoftspy finds, you gotta pay.

Fat Spybot

But before you rush to give away your money, try Spybot Search and Destroy. It's free all the way - scan and removal. Spybot includes tons more features (including automatic updates) than Xoftspy, but you have to ask yourself, if you actually need them.

Just because there are more features that you don't use, doesn't make the software any better.

Conclusion

So, we recommend to download both programs, and test them out on your PC with your unique combination of spyware. There's no point, really, in reading a of anti-spyware removal tools when the whole spy-arena changes pretty much every day, and most reviews are out-of-date within a week.

You can download Spybot from here, and Xoftspy from here. And good luck getting rid of all the junk!