AdWareALERT review

AdWareALERT – an anti-spyware program with unreliable and often fake scan results

Security software has a relatively high demand in the modern, online world, as users purchase items, enter their credit card details, and manage their monthly bill payments online. Without a doubt, this data is confidential and, if accessed by cybercriminals, can be used for malicious intent.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of bogus security programs around, AdWareALERT is one of those. The developers of such tools rely on inexperienced computer users and their inability to determine whether the scan results the app displays are legitimate or not. Our tests showed that this program should not be trusted as legitimate antimalware that would protect you from cyberattacks and malware.

False positives everywhere

A free version of AdWareALERT was tested on a clean, uninfected computer – the full scan took 50 minutes. It found 7 malicious registry entries related to 3 parasites, including an ISTbar browser hijacker, a peer-to-peer pest, and BonziBuddy spyware.

Further analysis showed that all detected entries actually are used by fully legitimate software that cannot damage the system or violate user privacy:

• Registry keys associated with the ISTbar hijacker actually belong to the REGTOOL5.DLL file, which is the safe essential component of the Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 development environment.
• Entries of unknown P2P pest actually are related to the harmless file sharing program eMule. These objects enable support of the ed2k protocol and special links used in certain websites.
• A key detected as BonziBuddy spyware actually is associated with safe Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 component RACREG32.DLL. This file is required by the Remote Automation Connection Manager tool included in the same product.

Screenshots provided below prove that AdWareALERT uses false positives.

The free version refuses to remove any malware it found and asks to register and purchase the full commercial version – you would be immediately redirected to the official site adwarealert.com for that.

It lacks a privacy policy, detailed information about the product and its vendors. Do not waste $50 on this useless program, as it is not capable of protecting you and focuses on showing false positives instead.