The candidates

a-squared Personal

a-squared is the newest tool in the comparison. It combines proven trojan scanning technology with a new sort of firewall technology. The so called IDS (Intrusion Detection System) technology is able to detect any malware by it's behavior. A backdoor always opens the computer for attacks, a worm always spreads itself, a dialer always dials and spyware always tries to show ads. The a-squared Personal background guard watches live all activities of all running programs and stops them if they do anything malware like. This is a new sort of malware protection which doesn't require daily updates which always have a delay of at least some hours.

TDS-3

TDS stands for Trojan Defence Suite. From the publisher: "TDS contains 48581 trojan references, this is like having 48581 UNIQUE fingerprints of trojan criminals. This is more than twice that of any other anti-trojan program. Not only do we have the largest database, TDS can detect trojans 17 ways allowing thousands more trojans to be detected without being in our database. TDS is the BEST trojan detective.". Ok, fact is that 48581 signatures are not more than twice that of any other anti-trojan program. a-squared includes 92261 signatures which is about twice the value of TDS. So, should we believe it's really the best trojan detective? The website also says "the only anti-trojan program supported by a fulltime team". Btw. the a-squared team covers currently 5 fulltime and many part time members.

TrojanHunter

Take a look at their front page: "TrojanHunter is the most powerful trojan scanner on the market.". Hmm.. is TDS-3 the best or TrojanHunter? Don't believe in marketing slogans.. Another sample: "TrojanHunter is the only scanner capable of cleaning process-injecting trojans.". That's wrong! a-squared is also able to do that.

BOClean

This program only contains a guard with a memory scan. No disk-scan is available. So it is able to block trojans to run, but it doesn't block downloading and saving them on your harddisk.

Tauscan

Tauscan is sold as an additional product to the Outpost Firewall by Agnitum. On their front page only the firewall software is promoted, so someone could believe they don't spend much energy in Tauscan.

The Cleaner

One of the oldest anti trojan tools but still alive. :)

-> Take a look at the feature comparison table.