Today is the day! We completed the final touches on Ad-aware 6.0 and have begun the process of notifying our customers. Please keep an eye on your mail, as it should arrive within the next few days. With this we are launching the new web site! Vastly improved over our previous one, we hope that you will find it easier to use and will enjoy the interactive elements we have added to make your stay more enjoyable.

You will notice that we now have three new products. The new redesigned engine has allowed us to expand our product base to include:

• Ad-aware 6.0 Plus - This is a continuation of the Plus series and all registered users can upgrade for free.
• Ad-aware 6.0 Professional (download) - We have an all-new version that will expand Ad-aware's functionality to provide many enhancements and mapped drive scanning support.
• Ad-aware 6.0 Professional (Boxed) - Yes! We are now expanding into the retail market. This version will be available by the end of February 2003 from our web site and in selected markets.

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 and 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 Support is still offered at their support forums and via email, but the program is no longer being updated to handle new spyware targets.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, and has been proven to be dangerous.

Ad-aware has not had a reference file update since September 24. I've personally submitted over a dozen new spyware/hijacker targets and lord knows how many updates to old spyware/hijackers. Other developers on my private mailing list update when new targets are submitted to them. Lavasoft has not.

Take Common Name for example. I sent out a special alert about this and even asked all of my readers to post the warning on various message boards about how Common Name can damage your internet connection when removed improperly (thank you for doing that). It is a very dangerous piece of software if you remove it wrong, and thankfully most people took the warnings seriously.

Lavasoft did nothing to update its removal routines for the Common Name toolbar to protect its users. This means that using Ad-aware in its current state to remove CommonName Toolbar will leave you without an internet connection. This is not theory, it is fact. I've seen it happen to people.

Lavasoft has stated numerous times that the current version will not be further updated so that the next version 6 can be developed. Version 6 is now three and half weeks overdue, with no explanation of why it is not out yet, or any estimate of when it will be released.

Consider this for a moment. What if your anti-virus product suddenly stopped updating its detection files for months on end? What if dozens of new virii were released in the wild, and older virii mutated? You are stuck unprotected by a product that now cannot work properly. Would you demand your money back?

Are you one of the many who shelled out $15 USD for Ad-aware Plus so that you could have real-time protection against spyware installation? I don't know what Lavasoft's refund policy is, but personally I'd be looking it up if I had purchased this abandoned product.

Don't bother going to their support forums to complain about it. They have now made it a policy to delete postings which they do not like. They deleted posts by the founder of Comet Cursor in a running thread asking how to get Comet Cursor removed as a target. A representative of Spyware Nuker not only had his posts deleted, they actually banned his IP address from the boards. They've even had the gall to delete some of my posts, and I used to be an administrator there. It makes you wonder what Lavasoft has to hide that they have to delete posts and ban the posters like that. Several moderators and administrators have resigned in disgust over this practice, myself included.

For these reasons, SpywareInfo will no longer host, mirror, or provide links to any Lavasoft software. I cannot endorse a product which could wreak havoc on the users system simply because the company refuses to update it.