Originally posted by Aubrey
There is also Cookie Pal, which easily tracks all the cookies installed in your pc's registry. When you run Ad-aware it presents you with a list of the modules and spywares, and most of them are the same with cookies found by Cookie Pal.
Not so. For example, when I visited a $@*$&?&%! website that ran and automatically downloaded the Comet cursor spyware program onto my computer, 28 separate entries were found by Ad-Aware. Only 4 of these were cookies. Most of 'em were a variety of files, including (obviously) a pair of executables. Spyware doesn't simply shoot a cookie onto your machine; otherwise, everything from Google to GameBanshee would be spyware. Spyware introduces a series of files that actually call up a specified web address when you access the web, and "tells" it where you've been and what you've done on the Internet. There are also claims that spyware can pass along sensitive information about computer settings and content, but that seems more open to question.
In any case, to remove spyware requires more than just selectively removing cookies, though that's certainly a good start.
Ad-Aware actually sniffs around for the seven or eight major spyware engines that are in use, finds these, and then identifies every part of the offending spyware program. You can choose to remove every bit of it. I've used it for over a year, and been pretty happy with it.
