Gripes about Ad-aware

December 28, 2004. Ad-aware SE v1.05 with a definitions file from December 16, 2004. It still does not detect Firefox tracking cookies.

As with any upgrade of software from an old version to a new version, the first question is whether the old version needs to be un-installed prior to installing the new version. I looked everywhere at the Ad-aware web site, but couldn't find any installation instructions. At install time, Ad-aware found the older version and asked if I wanted to un-install it first (you should).

Ad-aware installed an icon for itself in the quick launch bar without asking.

The Lavasoft home page reports the latest version of the Ad-aware software and Adware definitions. Today it was wrong about the latest definitions. It said they were from August 16, 2004 but they were actually from August 22nd.

FYI: After downloading the software, you should update the definition file first thing. This is an option at the end of the installation process, but it is not clear from the user interface that you must update the definition file as the one in the download is not up to date.

The first time I ran Ad-aware SE it reported 124 critical objects were detected. 99% were tracking cookies, hardly critical. Also, all the cookies were in the IE cache. I use Firefox much more often than I use IE but it found no tracking cookies in the Firefox cache. I can only assume that it didn't look.

It again reported the fact that IE has a blank page as the home page as a possible browser hijack attempt. The more info web page for this issue (which Lavasoft calls a TAC page) was not found.

It found some IE Favorites that were considered possible browser hijackers. They included infospace.com and looksmart.com. Beats me what to make of this.

Ad-aware 6

June 1, 2004. These gripes are about Ad-aware 6.0 Build 6.181. The free version.

On the main Ad-aware window, it reports information about the Spyware definitions it is using. Fine. However, this is called a "Reference file" and the fact that it is Spyware definitions is not obvious. Also, the date is reported as 99.99.2004. Is it month.day or day.month? There is no need for this to be confusing (it is day.month ). Those of us in the U.S. are accustomed to month.day, but the software is from Europe where the norm is day.month. Better to report the date as "May 30, 2004" to avoid confusion. Finally, what is "01R312" and why would a user care?

When you run the default scan it is not obvious at all which disks get scanned. Is it scanning the C disk? The D disk? The E disk? As far as I can tell, the only way to tell is to watch Ad-aware while it runs.

But there is a log file. Too bad it's mostly useless. Viewing the log file is not always possible. A button for it appears only after you run a scan. The log file is also not complete. Forget information about yesterday or last week, it does not even track everything done today. I did a scan of my E disk, then did a scan of my C disk. Viewing the log after the scan of the C disk did not show anything about the scan of the E disk.

Below is summary data from the log file just after an Ad-aware scan of the C disk. I can't even guess how long the scan ran, the total scanning time has no labels. Note that on the second line it reports zero new objects. However on the last line, it reports 20 new objects. Can't make this stuff up.

Disk scan result for C:\
New objects : 0
Objects found so far: 20
10:15:49 AM Scan complete
Summary of this scan
Total scanning time :00:04:16:469
Objects scanned :71167
Objects identified :20
Objects ignored :0
New objects :20

I have used Ad-aware for a couple years, and today it did something new. The scan reported as a possible browser hijacking the fact that the home page for Internet Explorer was set to "about:blank". I told Ad-aware to remove this registry entry along with the usual tracking cookies. The next time IE started, it went to msn.com rather than to a blank page.

Speaking of things that used to work, while a scan is running, Ad-aware no longer reports on the number of running processes. Now it shows a question mark.

A typical scan will find quite a few tracking cookies. Fine. However, it is not obvious how you tell Ad-aware to remove them all. There is no button, checkbox or widget of any type that lets you select all the "objects" that Ad-aware found. You might think the program would select them by default, but no. It can be done, right clicking on the list pops up a window with a Select All option. This should not be hidden. It is a core function of the product.