spybot interacting with spysweeper

[acje99]

Have run spybot & spysweeper for years with no problems.
Ungraded to spybot 1.5. Now, if spysweeper is running, I get lots of popups from Spysweeper warning me that it has blocked access from my computer to a website is know to have links to spyware.

I has something to do with the hosts file. If I allow spybot to immunize the host file, then spysweeper starts the pop up warnings. If I uncheck the hosts file under immunize, the popup warnings stop, after I remove the host file listing in Spysweeper.

In spysweeper, under shields, network...host file shield option is checked and the only item is the hosts file is "local host" and it is blocked.

If I run spybot and check the host file under immunize, it will not complete the process. If I close spysweeper, then the immunize will finish. But the warning popups start as soon as I start Spysweeper. Then if I check the hosts file listed in spysweeper, there are now 1000s of listed sites. And it appears to the the exact file that spybot lists as its host file.

Anyone understand what this interaction?
No sure which program I should let manage the hosts file.

Thoughts, suggestions and questions greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Stephen

[PepiMK]

Sounds like false positives from SpySweeper:

• Spybot-S&D adds entries to the hosts file that do block those hosts.
• Malware could use the hosts file to direct hosts to specific servers.
• SpySweeper doesn't distinguish between "good" and "bad" usage of the hosts file and complaints just upon the domain name, ignoring the target.

You probably should tell SpySweeper support that they should complain only about bad entries, and not about the good ones