How does spybot actually work?

[AznWarlord]

When you are doing a system scan, at the bottom of your screen it says

"Running Bot-Check" [Number/Total: File]

I see things like Smitfraud come up where I have written "File". My computer is brand new and I'm sure I don't have any problems. I want to ask, does it say Smitfraud because one of my files were infected, or does it say Smitfraud because Spybot is actually scanning my Computer for it? Same with Virtumonde.dll, it comes up at the bottom of the Window, does that mean I'm infected or Spybot is looking through my computer to see if I have that infection?

[Greyfox]

AznWarlord,

What it is showing in the status bar is what Spybot is scanning (looking) for, not what it has found. At the end of the scan you will either get a congratulations message if no malware was found, or some items shown in Red if there was something found. If you have Spybot set to include usage tracks in the scan, it will show these in Green.

Any shown in Red are potentially "dangerous" and should be fixed (unless you know exactly what they are and for some reason need them to remain).

Any shown in Green are just "user tracks". Depending on one's individual view they can be useful and hence left there, or for the slightly more paranoid, better cleaned out. So whether you decide to fix (delete) these, or not fix them, or not even include them in the scan scan is optional.

Hope this helps

[AznWarlord]

Yeah it answers my question completely, thanks, I was just a little confused since I'm not used to using Spybot.