14 DAY TRIAL // Unfortunately I can't think of a reason that would lead to a decrease of viruses, spyware and other threats' numbers in the close future. After all, the information about their creation are available all over the Internet, and if you are that kind of person that is likely to become a virus maker...nothing stops you from becoming one. Well, people with clean judgment shouldn't do such things, but I am not here to accuse or absolve virus makers of their sins. My purpose is to show you another tool designed to fight adware, spyware and other similar threats, so here it goes...
The name of today's antispyware tool is Mastr Scan, its current version is 18.4, and what I have here is a shareware release that can be run only seven times, but there aren't any feature limitations. The setup package has 4.7MB in size and installing the program was very easy, so let's move on to serious things now: the interface and features.
Mastr Scan's interface is really good, and I must say that this became usual with most of the antispyware scanners that I have seen lately - the graphics are up to date - glassy and shiny, the tools are well organized so anybody can use the program easily. The main window has a menu bar with seven items available, and this is what we're going to check right away. The names of the areas I am talking about are Scan, Quarantine, Recover, Scheduler, Submit Logfile, Max Shield and Options.
The Scan window appears above the main window of the program and gives you the chance to choose between Quick and Full Scan modes. Once the scanning is complete, you can send the items found (and believe me that this program will find something, no matter how clean your computer is!) to Quarantine or cancel and keep things the way they are.
If after removing some of the threats found, you notice strange behavior of your programs, you can use the Recover window to bring them back to life, and I must say that I have no idea why this option wasn't added to the Quarantine area, but let's leave this for the producers of the program to think about and move on.
The Scheduler does what it should do, and nothing more. The things to set here are the scan time, actions to perform on threat detection, scan method and target.
The next item of the main menu allows you to submit your logfile to the producer of this program for analysis and feedback regarding the threats found on your system.
MaxShield is a real treasure I have found here, and here's why... When you click the button with the same name, the MaxShield window pops up and allows you to change setting for live monitoring of your system. There are four areas that can be noticed here - ActiveX, Tracking Cookies, Host Files and Restricted Sites. In each one of these, you can choose the ActiveX items, cookies and sites to block, making your online experience safer.
At last, the Options menu item opens an external window with no less than eight areas available. Here, you can take system snapshots, check the running processes, view startup entries and, of course, product information.
These being said, there's only one more thing to do - draw the conclusions, of course!
The Good
Mastr Scan is an advanced tool, good to have at your side when fighting trojans, spyware, adware and other similar threats, being good looking, very easy to use and having a lot of interesting features.
The Bad
I would like to see an advanced process viewer in the future and maybe have the Quarantine and Restore windows' functions merged.
The Truth
Mastr Scan is an interesting program, and despite the 7 runs limitation, things are looking very good, so I can only recommend you to get it and check it out, because its price, 29.95$, doesn't sound bad at all. Enjoy it and stay safe!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
