Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
The arsenal of weapons you use to fight the malware, spyware and adware on your computer should always include Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware. Here’s what the developers themselves say about it:
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free utilizes Malwarebytes powerful technology to detect and remove all traces of malware including worms, trojans, rootkits, rogues, dialers, spyware and more.
While it’s good to have at least two different malware scanners installed on your system, we find Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to be the most effective. It’s also the fastest scanner we’ve ever tested, which is in stark contrast to the humongous amount of time SpyBot Search & Destroy needs to perform scans (don’t get us wrong, SpyBot is also a great tool). Despite its speed, it finds threats that even the commercial software programs miss. What are we waiting for? Let’s get started.
Using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
This part of the article almost isn’t worth writing. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MAM) is easy to use because it walks you through everything. Right from the get go, during MAM’s installation process, it asks you if you’d like to update the definitions. Later on, when you open it again, MAM will check to see if you’ve updated the definitions recently and ask if you’d like to update (of course you should click the Yes button).
When you arrive at the main screen, you are presented with three scan options:
- Perform quick scan
- Perform full scan
- Perform flash scan
During your regular weekly housekeeping routine (you do that, right?), you really only need to use the Quick Scan option. The first time you ever run MAM, however, you should perform the Full Scan. After that, maybe just run the Full Scan once every month or two. The Flash Scan is for registered users of MAM only, but if you register, then you can use it to scan your computer’s memory and autorun objects.
Once you’ve made your selection, click the Scan button to get started. If you are using the Quick Scan option, you’ll find that the scan will complete in just a few minutes. The Full Scan takes significantly longer.
After scanning is finished, if MAM found any threats, you will be presented with a new button that allows you to review them. From there, you can choose to remove all selected items (they should all be selected by default). You’ve now removed all the threats that MAM found. Wasn’t that easy?
Conclusion
As stated above, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware should be a part of your weekly housekeeping routine. You can proactively spend a few minutes scanning once per week or you can spend hours recovering from infection later, disrupting your work, browsing or even gaming activities on your computer. No tool can completely protect you from these threats, but having the right tools keeps the odds on well on your side.
