While ransomware and government spying receive the most attention when it is about computer viruses, another less well-known type of malware lurks silently within your system: spyware. These invasive programs can collect your personal information and send it back to hackers, so they are a major privacy risk. The good news is that there are free anti-spyware windows 10 programs that can detect these unwanted files and eliminate them to restore your privacy.
The ad-aware program that is popular from Lavasoft has been around for more than a decade, and has since evolved into a full security suite. This antivirus software comes with anti-spyware as well as a firewall. It also comes with cloud-based behavioral analysis. The program uses blacklisting and whitelisting to run trusted programs in a secure environment while allowing applications that are not trusted to run. This will protect you from zero-day malware infection. Other features include the ability to scan your boot sector, a sandbox for analyzing suspicious files, rootkit search, file disinfection and automatic updates of virus definitions.
SUPERAntiSpyware is another fantastic tool that has been available for a while. This antivirus can search your entire system and individual drives for spyware, adware Trojans as well as viruses and other threats. It has a unique feature called Scan Boost that allows you to block Volume Information and System Restore data, as well as use more CPU power for a speedier scanning.
It is crucial to realize that these tools are not as extensive as the top paid-for programs, but they can be a solid start. If you are looking for a complete solution, you can consider an all-in-one program such as Norton that offers unparalleled security against malware as well as the best parental controls.