Does Ad-aware 2008 Free edition scan these 2 folders: C:\Documents and Settings\name of person\cookies and C:\Documents and Settings\name of person\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files?. I am referring to these folders in XP pro using IE 7. Thank you in advance.

It will definately do so in a full scan and yes I'd imagine it would also scan them in a smart scan.

Why?

Casey

I was more interested to know if it does scan them in the smart scan. This program hasn't been able to find tracking cookies very often. The last time it found one was back in April with the 2007 version. I know that they are there and other programs find them, but Ad- aware doesn't seem to think they are important to find. I use other scans after this one and they find like 10 cookies, but none with this program. I know your technology has changed, but I still think tracking cookies are important to be removed also before they can be the cause of other problems.

Tracking cookies should be detected.

Go to ad-aware > settings > scanning

then check that 'scan for tracking cookies' is ticked and that 'ignore items with TAI less than' is set as 3.

That should then make sure that they are detected.

Hope tht works,

CAsey

Hi
I have had the settings that you mentioned set that way, but I have no luck with having this program find any tracking cookies. Today I even did a full scan and nothing. Spybot finds like 10 tracking cookies, but none with Ad-aware. With Ad-aware 2007, I would say it was a lot if that program found any cookies like 10 times in the year that I had the program. When it did find any cookies, it was like 1 or 2 when the other programs found many more. I was hoping for better luck with the 2008 version.... I know tracking cookies aren't a real dangerous thing, but it does supposedly have the ability to find them....

I guess my tracking cookies are invisible to Ad-Aware 2007 and 2008.

If you set it the tai setting to 1 it should pick up most of them. I have had it miss some cookies that other scanners pick up. This could be because adaware isn't perceiving them as a threat. Meaning the tai rating is lower than that and adware will not acknowledge them (put them in the list when the scan is finished).

Hi
The tai setting has been at 1 and it still doesn't pick up any tracking cookies. I have read recently that tracking cookies are becoming the vehicles of putting nasties in your computer besides causing spam. It just seems very odd that my other scans pick up like 12 or 15 tracking cookies, but none with Ad-aware. I believe I have been pointed to look at Spybot Search & Destroy's definition of tracking cookies, but that program picks up at least 8+ tracking cookies as soon as I finish with this scan. I run all these programs as a as needed process, so they are not being blocked live time. Occasionally, 2007 would find 1 or 2 cookies, but so far none with this program. I don't think I notice the program scanning where the cookies are located or else my cookies are located in a different location than what this program scans. It takes less than 12 minutes now to scan with the Smart Scan. The full scan found nothing either when I tried that one. Thanks for trying to help though. Ad-Aware SE was the best program. That found cookies and other things too.

floplo
IE 7
XP Pro
SP2 fully patched

I was rereading what Lavasoft described Adaware as and it isn't designed as a cookie reporter. It just reports malicious cookies or potentially malicious cookies. If you take a look at their threat index it will show you how they rate them, funny thing is they mention adaware se at the start of it. Think they need to fix that, since it is not even offered anymore.
https://secure.lavasoft.com/support/securit...at_analysis.php
Spybot is an ok one for complete cookie awareness. A bunch also use Super AntiSpyware. I personally use Spyterminator with Adaware. I don't care for the other two mentioned.
It is good to have more than one malware detection program. It is not Antivirus were they can interfere with each others detection while scanning. You could have all of them if you wanted. It shouldn't hurt anything. One thing about SpyTerminator if you try it. If you use Firefox3, the web security guard feature will not work with it yet, still waiting for a patch. Which sucks, because it will do about 10 or 20 second scan that shows just you just your cookies on your computer and you can go back to that site to determine what site it was. Very handy feature if you want to set it to ignore.
As for adaware, I wouldn't give it for the world. Not to mention how many other ones it caught for me over the past 5 months. It just caught this one at 11:30 today, on macromedia flash.

Click to view attachment
Family Id: 1394 Name: Win32.Trojan-Dropper.Delf Category: Malware TAI:10
Item Id: 190173 Value: File: C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\uninstall_plugin.exe

Believe me on one thing, 2008 smokes the rest of them. I do think some more features would be nice,though.