Very interesting page...
Parasite (unsolicited commercial software) Detection Script http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/ In answer to the previous question about Norton Internet Security, here's what they had to say:
Why doesn’t my anti-virus software detect this? Technically, most unsolicited commercial software isn’t viral: it doesn’t spread from computer to computer, it just installs and runs on one system.
That doesn’t mean it’s not harmful, but anti-virus software does not attempt to detect all software that could be harmful. Whether it should is a tricky argument that ends up a question of where you draw the line.
Actually some anti-virus programs do detect some of the parasites outlined on these pages, but not nearly all, and not all versions of them. Parasites that install using IE security holes are more likely to be targeted by the anti-virus software vendors, but the selection of targets seems for the most part to be pretty arbitrary.
For this reason there are now a number of anti-parasite packages around that work as a complement to anti-virus software.