Microsoft antispyware

[Potatoman]

Anyone seen the new free Antispyware program from MS? What do you think of it? It seems is gives loads more options / protection than adaware and spybot.! http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/softwar e/default.mspx

[dodgyshirt]

Used it yesterday for the first time and very impressed with it. I ran it immediately after scanning with Adaware and it picked up 7 new instances of scumware varying from intermediate to high levels of danger.including 2 Trojans. The interface is well laid out and as you say,gives plenty of additional options. It can also be downloaded from:-http://www.download.com/

[OBonio]

Did it pick up that you were running an MS operating system? A true anti spyware program would recommend uninstalling that.

[stevie21]

Very well said OBonio!! haha

Apparently the rumours are that Microsoft are going to offer this for free until the whole world starts using it (2 yrs or so?) and then charge for it.

As alluded to by OBonio, isn't it a bit cheeky to release a standalone bit of software that only needs to exist because there are so many holes in Mr Gates' Operating Systems and browsers?

[QmunkE]

To be fair, there are security holes in plenty of other software. The main reason that everyone finds problems with Microsoft software is that the vast majority of targeted systems use Windows/Internet Explorer/Outlook Express. It's not worth spyware writer's time to code malicious programs for Linux or Firefox.

[Potatoman]

Also, spyware doesnt all come thru the brower. It can also infect via a dodgy program dowloaded off the net.

[stevie21]

To suggest that the *main* reason that everybody finds problems with MS is its prevalence completely overlooks simple facts. For example, for a very long time, lots of security holes were left open by default rather than having to be opened by the user (displaying emails as html, displaying external images in there & executing scripts too, a variety of scripting turned on by default & just to be obscure, usermode access to I/O ports only closed after Win98). This theme is still true now although to a lesser extent with SP2.
I don't think that MS have taken security seriously enough & have sacrificed it for profits.

[dodgyshirt]

Thankyou everyone for running off at tangents, whatever the merits or otherwise of MS operating systems I still stand by my original statement that this is a very good piece of software. Don`t knock it `til you try it.

[stevie21]

Er, well said that man. I actually do agree that the software looks very effective and easy to use. If anyone cares, MS just recently bought a company who produced this software, so much of the code for the program pre-exists MS's involvement. It'll be interesting to see how it improves & changes.

As good as spybot is, it's interface is a bit of a turn off. Some people may not trust it or use it as much as they might as it's not too user friendly looking. In saying that, I do particularly like the weird noise that Adaware makes when it finds something untoward on your system.
Simple minds and all that...