Specifications

from time to time.
Some additional anonymity
is provided by PeerGuardian
blacklisting, which is incorpo-
rated to block known snooping
hosts. Blacklisting won’t stop
the
RIAA, but it will limit your
client’s exposure to malware.
Morpheus has no firewall
setup requirements, although it
won’t let you take files from a
machine behind a firewall if your
machine is also behind a firewall.
File selection tends to be decent,
and popular items will download
fairly quickly. We also didn’t
mind the unobtrusive banner
ads at the bottom of the applica-
tion window: They’re not like
Gator’s annoying pop-ups.
If you put in the proxy setup
time, Morpheus 3.2 will come
the closest of the three reviewed
offerings to providing anonymi-
ty and usefulness.
Morpheus 3.2
Banner-ad supported, with some
spyware. StreamCast Networks Inc.,
www.morpheus.com.
lllmm
PC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 www.pcmag.com
32
to help—but
not guaran-
tee—anonymity.
Two up-front warn-
ings: Despite what the site claims,
Morpheus 3.2 contains spyware.
Some can be removed after in-
stallation with a spyware-re-
moval tool, but you may destroy
the client’s functionality if you go
too far (a reinstall and some ex-
perimentation might be needed).
Morpheus 3.2
While the Gnutella network can
be considered a veteran, having
been launched not long after
Napster, it is usually populated
by well under 200,000 users,
light years away from Kazaa or
FastTrack’s nearly 4 million.
Being susceptible to incomplete
or fake files hasn’t helped. The
new Morpheus 3.2 hopes to give
it a boost with features designed
More important to this story’s
theme—Morpheus is not anony-
mous by default.
To make Morpheus 3.2 anony-
mous, you have to enable a built-
in feature that is often used as
a jury-rigged add-on to other
applications. By clicking on the
wrench icon (Config your Set-
tings) and selecting the
Proxy tab, you enable a
list of proxies that
Morpheus can run
through, sort of like
Blubster’s bouncers.
What’s annoying
is that the client
doesn’t help with this
process at all, taking you
to a Web search of sites that
list or host anonymous proxies.
With a lot of effort, you can end
up with a dozen or more prox-
ies that Morpheus will random-
ly select for each download you
initiate. Maintaining this list,
however, will require regular
revisiting of the annoying setup
process, as proxies do go down
Sweeping for Spies, Improved
BY KONSTANTINOS
KARAGIANNIS
A
dware, key loggers, and
other spyware can send
personal information
about you out to the wired
world, as well as make your ma-
chine run sluggishly. Spyware-
removal tools are as important
as firewall and antivirus pack-
ages these days. We covered
nine removal tools in our April
22, 2003 issue, but we never
thought our last-place entry
would improve so much within
two seasons. Webroot’s
Spy
Sweeper 2.1
(yearly subscription,
$29.95) is now a viable choice.
The slick new version sets up
by default to run when Windows
is started and will prevent your
machine in real time from in-
stalling or activating spyware.
When a snoop is found, the
program identifies and defines it
to the user and prompts for per-
mission to scan and quarantine it.
You can then decide whether to
delete it and other offenders per-
manently. Spyware you may have
to live with is also identified. For
instance, Spy Sweeper tells you
that Cydoor Peer-to-Peer Depen-
dency is necessary to keep Kazaa
or a similar client running.
A subscription product, Spy
Sweeper automatically updates
itself with what seems to be a
wonderfully current database.
The program found a couple of
spyware apps and traces that
even our previous Editors’
Choice, SpyBot Search & De-
stroy, left happily running on our
test systems (although these do
not seem particularly malicious).
For Spy Sweeper to be most
effective, you have to be aware of
its settings and invoke the pro-
gram occasionally. A little exper-
imentation showed us that
someone with access to your
machine can install, say, a key
logger, and then tell Spy Sweep-
er to ignore it in future scans.
Fortunately, if you pay atten-
tion during such future scans,
you’ll still notice the installed
covert app such as Spector or
WinWhatWhere mentioned at
the bottom of the scan window
as being present. If you do see
something there that you didn’t
okay in the past, drill into Op-
tions and the Always Keep tab to
remove it from the list. A nice
future improvement would be to
password-protect the interface.
While SpyBot is still free and
likely to keep improving as well,
Webroot’s Spy Sweeper 2.1 is a
tough service to pass up.
Spy Sweeper 2.1
Price: Yearly subscription, $29.95.
Webroot Software Inc., 800-772-9383,
www.webroot.com.
llllm
Spy Sweeper 2.1 is thorough and easy to use, spotting every-
thing that could conceivably be called spyware.
It looks and acts
a lot like Kazaa (minus
about 3.5 million users), but
Morpheus does
provide a modicum of
anonymity with
adequate stability.