Nicolas Stark from Lavasoft is announcing the release of a new build of the popular and industry leading anti-trackware utility Ad-aware. Combining optimization and newly developed scanning technology, Lavasoft has been able to increase the overall speed and efficiency of Ad-aware by up to 400% over previous releases of the 6.x generation. Using newly developed conditional and "Smart Scan" technology, Ad-aware can actually decide, based on previous detections during the scanning process, whether additional scanning is required. This innovation alone gives Ad-aware a clear advantage over other applications in the anti-spyware market by using a dynamic, rather than reactive approach for the detection of potential privacy and security threats. As part of the continuing commitment to providing the most advanced, safest, and efficient privacy software available, Lavasoft has included a feature that allows Ad-aware to counter exploits that incorporate HOSTS file editing to facilitate browser hijacking. Users can now scan, log, backup, remove, and restore known references in the HOSTS file efficiently and safely with a few simple clicks. Registry protection and cleaning has also been enhanced to include detection of dynamically created registry keys while improving the overall efficiency of the deep scan mode and overall improvements in the scanning engine have made the In-Depth disk scanning mode more effective while lowering CPU resource usage. New in Ad-aware 6 Build 181:Speed ? More comprehensive and up to 400% faster than any previous 6x release.Smart scan mode ? Improves speed even further and has been optimized to detect content at the root level enabling fast and efficient maintenance scanning. Improved In-depth scan ? More effective while reducing CPU resources.Improved deep registry scan ? Faster with additional registry coverage that can detect dynamically created registry keys.Conditional scanning ? Improving speed by allowing Ad-aware to decide when and where additional scanning is needed based on a previous detection during the scanning process.HOSTS file scanning ? Newly discovered exploit that uses HOSTS file editing to facilitate browser hijacking has been countered with this addition. Now Ad-aware has the ability to scan, backup, remove, and restore known references from your HOSTS file.More efficient reference file usage ? Ad-aware can now read and use more detailed information stored in the reference file.Improved Browser Hijacker detection ? Better detection for known and newly discovered Browser Hijackers.Improved log file output ? More comprehensive reporting for better record keeping. Download locations: Mirror 1 - Has core update patch Mirror 2 - Has core update patch More mirrors