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Why you should stop using Lavasoft's Ad-aware
by TS | Thomas on Thu 26 Dec 2002, 9:55 AM
I truly hate that it has come to this. Lavasoft's Ad-aware used to be a fine product. Not only was it the only free solution for finding & destroying advertising spyware, it was also a good program. However, Lavasoft has abandoned Ad-aware 5.83. Support is still offered at their support forums & via email, but the program is no longer being updated to handle new spyware targets. In fact, I feel that it is necessary to recommend to everyone that they simply remove Ad-aware version 5 entirely. Using it in its current, unupdated form can be, & has been proven to be dangerous.
Would you like to know more? Update, please see here for Lavasoft's response to Spywareinfo's claim.
by TS | Thomas on Thu 26 Dec 2002, 9:55 AM
I truly hate that it has come to this. Lavasoft's Ad-aware used to be a fine product. Not only was it the only free solution for finding & destroying advertising spyware, it was also a good program. However, Lavasoft has abandoned Ad-aware 5.83. Support is still offered at their support forums & via email, but the program is no longer being updated to handle new spyware targets. In fact, I feel that it is necessary to recommend to everyone that they simply remove Ad-aware version 5 entirely. Using it in its current, unupdated form can be, & has been proven to be dangerous.
Would you like to know more? Update, please see here for Lavasoft's response to Spywareinfo's claim.
Quote
To all,
It has become apparent that many people are concerned with the lack of updates for Ad-aware 5.83. We acknowledge this and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. The reasons for this are as follows:
1) The 5x engine is old and to keep ahead of our target base needs to be replaced. Are we saying it is bad or ineffective? No. But to effectively and safely remove many new targets and those older ones, which have changed/mutated, we would need to do a major upgrade of 5.83 and it’s reference file as well.
2) The 5x engine (in its current configuration) cannot handle many of the new targets correctly. As stated in #1, the entire Ad-aware executable would need to be rewritten.
3) We have been hard at work on that very upgrade, but where this is different is in WHAT we are upgrading to. As many of you already know, we are/were working on version 6. It is an entirely new application; more powerful, expandable, configurable, and to be quite honest, light years ahead of version 5.83. We decided that any further upgrades beyond 5.83 would be more of a waste of time than productive as the coding work for version 6 was already underway. We therefore decided to place all of our efforts into the new version.
4) As with any endeavor started from scratch, we ran into several delays and complications as proposed features didn’t work correctly or were not compatible with the new version. We apologize for the delays but they were unavoidable.
We are however notifying you (our customers and the general public) that we have entered into the late stages of beta testing. Except for some minor polishing and some last minute initial bug fixes, we are nearly done and should be ready to release Ad-aware 6 to our customers mid January 2003 and to our freeware users at the beginning of February 2003. Please be patient and we are confident that when you see what we have to offer you will understand AND appreciate the time taken to make it the best solution available!
It has become apparent that many people are concerned with the lack of updates for Ad-aware 5.83. We acknowledge this and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. The reasons for this are as follows:
1) The 5x engine is old and to keep ahead of our target base needs to be replaced. Are we saying it is bad or ineffective? No. But to effectively and safely remove many new targets and those older ones, which have changed/mutated, we would need to do a major upgrade of 5.83 and it’s reference file as well.
2) The 5x engine (in its current configuration) cannot handle many of the new targets correctly. As stated in #1, the entire Ad-aware executable would need to be rewritten.
3) We have been hard at work on that very upgrade, but where this is different is in WHAT we are upgrading to. As many of you already know, we are/were working on version 6. It is an entirely new application; more powerful, expandable, configurable, and to be quite honest, light years ahead of version 5.83. We decided that any further upgrades beyond 5.83 would be more of a waste of time than productive as the coding work for version 6 was already underway. We therefore decided to place all of our efforts into the new version.
4) As with any endeavor started from scratch, we ran into several delays and complications as proposed features didn’t work correctly or were not compatible with the new version. We apologize for the delays but they were unavoidable.
We are however notifying you (our customers and the general public) that we have entered into the late stages of beta testing. Except for some minor polishing and some last minute initial bug fixes, we are nearly done and should be ready to release Ad-aware 6 to our customers mid January 2003 and to our freeware users at the beginning of February 2003. Please be patient and we are confident that when you see what we have to offer you will understand AND appreciate the time taken to make it the best solution available!
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