Desktop Armor: Waging War Against Malware and More A Slightly Different Approach to Fighting Malware Forrest Stroud
Desktop Armor and Geek Superhero are twin malware detection and removal programs from Headlight Software, developers of the popular GetRight download manager. It's a bit surprising to see Headlight develop such products given the company's 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.
Whereas Geek Superhero's comic-inspired motif may come across as a bit distracting – or even goofy – the toned-down Desktop Armor is all about business, and as such is the more likely candidate for use in enterprise environments. In any case, the $25 registration fee allows users to download and use both Desktop Armor and Geek Superhero.
The twin clients protect 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 programs take a slightly different approach to combating malware. Whereas most anti-malware clients focus on identifying specific adware components or viruses, Desktop Armor (DA) and Geek Superhero (GS) primarily rely 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 the tools, 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 DA and GS won't detect existing malware, so if you already have some adware components or a Trojan horse lurking on your hard drive, the tools 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, DA and GS not only prevent new viruses, worms, and Trojans from infecting your computer, they also prevent 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.
