Geek Superhero: Waging War Against Malware and More A Slightly Different Approach to Fighting Malware Forrest Stroud
Geek Superhero is a new malware detection and removal program from Headlight Software, developers of the popular GetRight download manager. It's a bit surprising to see Headlight develop such a product given their history — when GetRight originally debuted, it was a well-known carrier of Gator adware components. GetRight has been adware-free since 2002, though, and perhaps the negative backlash from Headlight's early inclusion of adware components played a part in the 180 degree turn on malware.
Geek Superhero's comic-inspired motif may come across as a bit distracting – and even goofy – but the client has quite a bit to offer under its somewhat flaky exterior. The $25 client protects your computer from a wide variety of nefarious and annoying activities that can stealthily infiltrate your computer, including adware components, browser hijackers (tools that change your homepage, default search engine, or favorites/bookmarks), programs that secretly install and automatically run when Windows starts, and poorly trained apps that leave unwanted detritus littered across your desktop.
The Superhero takes a slightly different approach to combating malware. Whereas most anti-malware clients focus on identifying specific adware components or viruses, Geek Superhero primarily relies on monitoring the settings and programs directly affected by these malignant collections of code. That means that while you won't need to continually download malware reference updates for Geek Superhero, you will want to make sure you have the latest version of the software, as crackers are continually discovering new settings to manipulate and new tricks to launch upon the unwary user.
Another potential downside to this approach is that it means in most cases Geek Superhero won't detect existing malware, so if you already have some adware components or a Trojan horse lurking on your hard drive, Geek Superhero won't identify it and won't be able to prevent it from continuing to do damage or monitor your activities (we recommend grabbing a copy of Ad-Aware SE or Spybot Search and Destroy if you believe you already have malware on your computer).
Still, by continually monitoring various settings on your computer and warning you any time a program or rogue piece of code attempts to change the settings, Geek Superhero not only prevents new viruses, worms, and Trojans from infecting your computer, it also prevents other types of programs such as dial-up changers, which will secretly change your modem's Internet connection phone number to an expensive pay-per-minute number, from infiltrating your PC.
