Whitelist Approved by CastleCops Security Professionals

	Reviewer's Ratings	Avg Company Rating
Overall Feeling
Customer Support
Value for the money
Product's ease of use
Ease of installation
Product website
Reliability

Compare Product Reviews in this Class

Overall Feeling: This is an excellent tool in the spyware battle. It provides insight into potentially harmful registry entries and browser hijack objects. It is an essential tool at helping to locate and eliminate most of the harmfull dll's that could be hiding in the registry. One very nice feature is the quickness with which the program scans which rarely exceed 5 seconds.

Customer Support: So far, I haven't had much need for customer support from Merijn. Overall, it appears that primary communication is performed via email and responses are generally received within a day or two.

Value for the money: Not much to say here -- it's free! I would recommend using Paypal to make a small donation at www.merijn.com (I have no affiliation, btw).

Product's Ease of Use: This is the only downside to Hijack This. First, it is not specifically a spyware tool since it opens a window into EVERYTHING running on your system. Delete/Remove the wrong thing and you could be re-installing a new copy of Windows (insert version here). The other downside is that it is a little cryptic. All entries listed are categorized with a Letter/Number combination to depict the type of entry (R - Registry, N - Netscape, etc.). This can be a little confusing to the new user. Most computer savvy people will be able to navigate the point-and-click interface with few problems.

Ease of Installation: Unzip it and launch the .exe file. Only issue with installation is copying the file to a permanent directory to provide a reliable location for backups. It is also a very small installation (version 1.98.2 is 198 KB).

Product Website: The website is designed very simply -- not your typical overdone corporate website. The site provides easy navigation and generally has most information that would be needed to solve any problems.

Reliability: From the release notes, it looks pretty solid. Most of the reliability issues have stemmed from destructive adware/spyware that are now looking for products like Hijack This. So far, I have not had any issues in several months of using the product.

Added: November 17th 2004

Hits: 2594
NOTE: Product reviews are independently written by our members and do not necessarily express the opinions or views of CastleCops.