Well-known anti-spyware pioneer Lavasoft today announced that Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition, the latest version of the company's flagship product, received Microsoft Windows Vista Certification. To address the growing market of Windows Vista users, and to give users the ability to create a layered security approach, Ad-Aware has passed rigourous testing for Windows Vista certification and now also fully integrates with the Windows Security Center.

Windows Vista may be Microsoft's most secure operating system to date, but despite measures taken to make it more resistible to malware attacks, users are still vulnerable to threats. The implementation of Microsoft's User Account Control (UAC) was designed to increase protection against common forms of spyware and malware. However, due to the frequency of the UAC alerts, many users either ignore them and permit all actions, or turn off the UAC, leading to system vulnerabilities.

At the same time, viruses, spyware, password-stealing Trojans and rootkits continue to thrive as malware authors target the popular operating system and its large user base of an estimated 300 million users. The market share for Windows Vista users is growing steadily and is, as of January 2009, slightly over 22%, exceeding even Microsoft's expectations prior to its launch in January 2007, industry reports show.

"Products that carry the Certified for Windows Vista logo have met explicit standards of reliability and quality, and have been tested and proven to deliver a superior experience with Windows Vista," said Brad Goldberg, General Manager for Windows Vista Product Management at Microsoft Corp. "We are extremely pleased that Ad-Aware carries the certified logo and takes advantage of the new technologies available in Windows Vista."

Ad-Aware - Anniversary Edition is available at www.lavasoft.com. Prices start at $26.95 for the Plus version and $39.95 for the Pro version. Deep discounts are available for multi-user licenses. Technical support and updates are free. Lavasoft continues to distribute a Free version as a no-strings-attached option to ensure that all computer users are able to protect their privacy when connecting to the Internet.