With regret, we have to announce that update support for dated versions of Spybot-S&D is going to end.

Fighting malware is a task that constantly requires new approaches. Some of these, we will make available through updated versions of tool libraries or plugins, but some make updates of the full software necessary. For those interested in a detailed technical background, see the OpenSBI wiki, which shows some of the changes in structure.

Users with very old hardware, and users of Windows 95 who could not use Spybot-S&D 1.4, chose to stay with very old versions of the software, and we tried to accommodate them by still offering them the updates, with the limitation that Spybot-S&D would complain about a lot of incompatible detection patterns and results would have to be used with extra care.

While we regarded that as a service for the aforementioned group of users, using current detection patterns in old software versions is getting too dangerous if that extra care is not applied, which we simply cannot expect from every user. We therefore decided to restrict updates to the current software version, and during version switches, as has recently happened with the switch to 1.6, the last version for a short while.

If you have any serious reasons for not upating to 1.6, let us know on the forum!

About 24 hours ago, Google made a beta version of their own browser, Chrome, available to the public.

From a privacy standpoint, we neither like to see GoogleUpdate permanently in the background nor those anonymous usage statistics it wants to send home, but since it's open source, we're hoping for free cleaned-up clones.

From a security standpoint, the idea of restricting rights of browsing processes is something we hope to see spreading to other browsers as well, since we fully have to agree with this precaution (see for example Alter Ego).

But the reason to write a news article about it today is not for adding our opinion on Chrome to the mass of other opinions already out there, but to announce support for Chrome in Spybot - Search & Destroy. As soon as Chrome was available, we started digging into it and have now finished support for scanning and cleaning Chrome cookies, bookmarks and history (thanks to the similarity to Firefox, that was actually no big deal). Immunization is pending and depends on Chrome's capabilities for that. You can subscribe to the Chrome support feature request or watch our beta forum if you are interested in the progress.

The new method TeaTimer uses to inform the user about its actions has caused some controversy recently, so we thought some kind of explanation would be useful.

The decision to use balloon tooltips to display the progress was made because they're a Windows standard for informing the user, and following standards is in general regarded as making things easier for the user. Informing about scanned processes was also kind of important for people who did not understand what TeaTimer was doing on startup.

The tray icon also allows to disable any future balloons from its context menu, so they were purely optional. Sadly, so far many users did not look for this option, but came asking for a way to get rid of them, so we feel a change to make it more evident might be necessary.

We also did not expect the combination of an unlucky implementation of balloons in Windows 2000 with users who haven't dealed with tooltips yet. On Windows XP, these balloons contain a visible X than can be clicked to close them. On Windows 2000, you can simple click the balloon itself anywhere to close it, which is not as evident, and the reaction takes some time while TeaTimer is scanning.

Balloons also vanish after a specified amount of time, which we have set to a small value to work immediately. Again, Windows 2000 is a bit unlucky there because is does not count this time down when the user is not actively using the computer. Nice thought, but not fully compatible with the intention behind the TeaTimer messages.

While we prepare a workaround that makes balloon messages easier to understand and get rid of for Windows 2000 users, TeaTimer and main application updates are disabled. Expect an update within a week.