SPYBOTANON06:
SPYBOT S&D is a "file" and it is located on my hardrive, specifically my C Drive...if they are able to access that file, then they have the "capability" to access others.....
During Spybot's update process the update servers do not actually access any files on your system. Files are download from those servers but no files are accessed by them.
When you initiate an update, the update process starts with the downloading of the spybotsd.ini file that contains information about what servers and updates are available. This information is written to the online.ini file. The online.ini file is compared with the downloaded.ini file which contains information about previous updates. That comparison determines what new updates are available for downloading.
The download of the spybotsd.ini file and any update files you download are downloaded via requests from your system. There is no upload of any information except the transmission protocol information required for the download processes.
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I'm sorry to hear that you somehow lost a file that apparently was important to you.
There are services that you can subscribe to that allow you to backup your files to a network based servers, but those services don't come automatically with anti-spyware or anti-virus software (especially free ones).
Consider for a moment what would happen if the entire hard drive on your system should fail. Not only would you have replace the hard drive and reload the operating system and all the software came with the system, you would have to reinstall if not download and reinstall all the software that was added since the system was new. The worst part may not be just getting the system running again. Every file that you ever created and saved with that software would be gone.
Cause for reflection? I hope so!
Safe personal computing practices includes (but are certainly are not limited to) backing up all user data and the registry on a regular basis. I personally have external USB2 connected hard drives and take daily progressive (incremental) backups using Retrospect (a program that incidentally came gratis with the purchase of one of my external drives).
The incremental backup allows me to restore any file to any point when any backup was taken. In other words if I were accidentally save a file after modifying it and a new dump has been taken, I am not limited to restoring that file just to the last time the file was backed up. I can restore that file to any point in time that a dump was taken (yesterday, two days ago, a month ago or to the very first time I created that file.
I strongly suggest that you consider looking into backing up the information on your system.
